ABSTRACT
Merleau-Ponty argues that even animal bodies are improvisatory and transform themselves (at the level of their organs as well as their behaviours) in response to problems presented by their situations. Animals, too, develop cultures and new bodies (what Haraway has called “cyborg” bodies) through tool use. The question then arises about whether the transformations that humans are capable of are any different. I argue that the answer lies in Merleau-Ponty's claim that “what defines [the hu]man is not the capacity to create a second nature—economic, social, or cultural—beyond biological nature; it is rather the capacity of going beyond created structures in order to create others”, and I show how this capacity for existential transformation has its roots in the particular “symbolic” form that human perception has and the transposition and expression that it involves. I argue, too, that these existential transformations take place at a bodily level, quite apart from our planning and intention, and by virtue of the contingencies of meaning to which our material practices open us.
