ABSTRACT
Merleau-Ponty drew substantially from scientific evidence, from neurological experiments and case studies from which he developed a new understanding of perception. The author made for a kind of symmetry between two kinds of tectonic expression. Firstly, the tectonics of construction, as expressed in the traces of the process of making, and secondly, what called the tectonics of occupation, meaning the accumulating traces of use. For Merleau-Ponty, the consciousness-object distinction seemed to imply the reinstatement of mind-body dualism, resulting in the same problem of explaining how the two parts can be linked. In Merleau-Ponty's final work he proposed what amounts to a new ontological category: the 'flesh of the world', out of which our understanding of all other categories emerges. His writing the concept of flesh already suggested a radical decentring of the human subject, subverting its traditionally dominant position in the history of Western philosophy.
