Merleau-Ponty and Blanchot’s Negative Phenomenology

Abstract

In this paper I have examined the negative phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Blanchot. Negative phenomenologies repress differance as the transcendental and the empirical are repetitions of the same through iterability. I would argue, as I argued previously with Levinas and Ricoeur, that a negative phenomenology or a reversal of phenomenology repeats it rather than managing to escape it.This is because it still proceeds within its metaphysical vocabulary and ontological structure. Merleau-Ponty and Blanchot thus, in inverting and reversing phenomenology, only repeat it by borrowing entirely from its metaphysical vocabulary and structure. Derrida’s phenomenology in place, is a meta-phenomenology in discovering the origin of phenomenology as differance, or the difference between philosophy and non-philosophy, transcendental and empirical.