Writing, incarnation, deferral. Merleau-Ponty and Derrida on The Origin of Geometry

Abstract

The intellectual history of the 20th century has been written along ascenario  which  sees  in  Merleau-Ponty's  death  in 1961  the  partition  line between an existential and phenomenological generation and the immediately subsequent event of structuralism. The publication of Merleau-Pontys lecture notes  on  Edmund  Husserl's  Origin of  geometry  has  shown  how  shaky  the grounds of such a simplifying reading are. Indeed, while Derrida's translation of and introduction to Husserl's text from 1962 became a founding text for the structuralist generation, introducing a reflection about the historicity and the materiality of ideality, it was only in 1998, with the publication of Merleau-Ponty's notes from the Collège de France lecture in 1959 on the same topic, that it became clear how close the early Derrida is to the late Merleau-Ponty.Just  as  Derrida,  Merleau-Ponty  had identified  in  Husserl's  tension  between archaeology and teleology the basic problem of phenomenology, introducing the question of history and that of media of cultural transmission. Comparing both readings in their specific context not only brings about a more complex picture  of  the intellectual  debates  of  the  time,  but  also  shows  how, with Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of the Origin of geometry, Derrida's "différence" predates itself and receives another genealogy.