*Déformation cohérente* is Merleau-Ponty's own coinage rather than Malraux's, per Galen Johnson
ID: deformation-coherente-mp-coinage Title: Déformation cohérente is Merleau-Ponty's own coinage rather than Malraux's, per Galen Johnson Status: contested Confidence: low Claim type: attribution Created: 2026-04-27 Updated: 2026-07-27 Sources: johnson-carbone-saintaubert-2020-poetic-of-the-world, merleau-ponty-1964-signs, malraux-1953-voices-of-silence Wiki homes: coherent-deformation, andre-malraux
Claim
Per Galen Johnson (Ch 6 — locator corrected 2026-07-26; formerly "Ch 3" — "From the World of Silence to Poetic Language: Merleau-Ponty and Valéry," in johnson-carbone-saintaubert-2020-poetic-of-the-world), the phrase déformation cohérente is Merleau-Ponty's own coinage rather than Malraux's, despite MP's own Signs citation that attributes the phrase to Malraux's Voices of Silence. Johnson's argument: MP credits Malraux, but Malraux's text stresses coherence of an artist's style without using the conjoined phrase "coherent deformation"; the phrase as such is MP's "creative deformation of Malraux's text."
Evidence
- johnson-carbone-saintaubert-2020-poetic-of-the-world — Ch 6 (Johnson), footnote 29 to the "coherent deformation" passage (locator corrected 2026-07-26: fn 29's text sits in the Ch 6 notes at raw 3364, attached to the Ch 6 body text at raw 1997; Ch 3's own footnote 29, raw 2775, is a Lyotard citation): "Though Malraux stresses the coherence of an artist's style, the phrase 'coherent deformation' is Merleau-Ponty's own, a creative deformation of Malraux's text, one might say" (raw line 3364, verified 2026-04-29 targeted re-read). The footnote attaches to Johnson's body text at raw line 1997: "Merleau-Ponty speaks of the equivalence that is yet heterogeneous between thing and expression as a 'coherent deformation' (S, 68/54), and the phrase is an adaptation from Malraux." The body text frames the phrase as an adaptation; the footnote sharpens the adaptation into coinage.
- johnson-carbone-saintaubert-2020-poetic-of-the-world — Ch 6 footnote 29 also supplies the philological frame: Malraux, The Voices of Silence, trans. Stuart (Princeton 1978) p. 324; Pléiade Les voix du silence (1951) p. 322; the citation MP makes is from the second volume (La création esthétique) of Malraux's Psychologie de l'art trilogy (Skira 1947–49). Johnson identifies the precise Malraux locus MP draws on while arguing the conjoined phrase is MP's.
- merleau-ponty-1964-signs — Signs p. 68/54 ("Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence"): MP's own usage and citation that attributes the phrase to Malraux. The attribution claim corrects MP's self-presentation: MP credits Malraux; Johnson argues MP coined.
Counterpressure / Limits
- The Malraux-side textual check is partially discharged via the Malraux 1953 ingest (2026-04-29). The English Voices of Silence (Stuart Gilbert 1953) is now in
raw/. A search of the English text returns 0 hits for "coherent deformation" — see claims#malraux-schema-precedes-mp-coherent-deformation-philological-refinement for the philological refinement (the operative English vocabulary is schema, system of significant equivalences, style; the conjoined phrase does not appear). This partially discharges Johnson's coinage attribution at the English-translation level: anglophone MP-readers cannot find the locution in Gilbert's Voices. However, the French-original check at La Création esthétique p. 152 (Pléiade Voix du silence p. 322) remains outstanding (discharged adversely 2026-07-26 — see the French-original bullet below) — the Skira 1947–49 Psychologie de l'art and the bound 1951 Voix du silence (Pléiade) are both not inraw/. Whether Malraux's French Part III ("La Création esthétique") contains the conjoined phrase déformation cohérente depends on Johnson's reading of Malraux as authoritative. Promotion tosupportedwould require either (a) the French Malraux primary source ingested + verified absence of the conjoined phrase, or (b) a second secondary source corroborating Johnson's coinage attribution. - MP himself attributes to Malraux. Signs p. 68/54 cites the phrase as Malraux's. The attribution claim therefore requires reading MP's Signs citation as a generous attribution of creative source material rather than as a literal claim about phrase-origin. This is consistent with MP's broader citation practice (he often credits adaptations to source authors) but the strong-coinage reading is interpretively imposed on MP's text.
- The claim does not depend on claims#valery-mauvaises-pensees-attribution and is logically independent: if MP coined déformation cohérente and also drew on Valéry's se déforme, the two attributions are coordinate rather than competing.
- Faul, Andén, Romdenh-Romluc and other MP-secondary-literature commentators may have addressed the attribution question; not surveyed here. Promotion to
supportedwould require either (a) a Malraux-side check confirming the phrase is not in Les voix du silence, or (b) a second secondary source corroborating Johnson's coinage attribution. (Leg (a) discharged adversely 2026-07-26 — the check returned presence, not absence; see the French-original bullet below. A leg-(b) survey would now bear on the corrective restatement filed to the Harvest reservoir, not on this entry's promotion.) - French-original check discharged ADVERSELY (2026-07-26, consolidation supported-jury; reviewer finding independently re-verified by main-thread raw check). The French Les voix du silence is in
raw/(uningested:raw/les-voix-du-silence-(andre-malraux).md) and DOES contain the conjoined phrase, twice: "…pour atteindre une autre déformation cohérente — chargée d'une autre signification" (raw line 3762, Pléiade block {354}, the Byzantine-masters passage) and the definitional "…il sut que la déformation cohérente est un moyen de création" (raw line 4660, the El Greco passage). Gilbert's English renders these loci "purposeful distortion" / "organized distortion" (raw 3767 / 4656 of the English file), which is why the English-side 0-hit check above read as corroboration — a translation artifact, not evidence about Malraux's vocabulary. The phrase is NOT at the Pléiade p. 322 locus Johnson's fn 29 cites (blocks {321}–{324}, raw 3424–3448, contain no «déformation» at all), so Johnson's page-cite is also wrong. Since the 1951 Voix du silence precedes MP's 1952 Signs essay, the coinage attribution is refuted at the philological level; the entry remains accurate as a report of Johnson's position. The corrective restatement (Malraux coined; MP adopted; the English absence is Gilbert's translation choice; Johnson's fn-29 attribution fails against the French text) is filed to the Harvest reservoir — consolidation makes no new claims. The Skira Psychologie de l'art / La Création esthétique p. 152 (the locus MP himself cites at Signs n. 14) remains un-ingested and is a distinct volume from the 1951 Pléiade reworking. Panel note: the rival-reading refuter's side assertion that raw 4660 is not the conjoined locution is itself a false absence (it flagged OCR uncertainty; the main-thread read confirms the phrase verbatim at 4660). - C3 supported-jury refuter objection (evidence-chain lens, consolidation 2026-07-26, wf_2de1ae1f-59d / wf_f4d3dab1-358): The French Malraux check the entry names as its own precondition for
supportedis now performable — and it returns PRESENCE, not absence. claims#deformation-coherente-mp-coinage Counterpressure bullet 1 asserts that "the Skira 1947–49 Psychologie de l'art and the bound 1951 Voix du silence (Pléiade) are both not inraw/," and makes promotion conditional on "(a) the French Malraux primary source ingested + verified absence of the conjoined phrase." That absence assertion is false as of the 2026-07-26 register state:raw/les-voix-du-silence-(andre-malraux).mdis the nrf / "LA GALERIE DE LA PLÉIADE" Les voix du silence (title page at raw lines 9–19; printing line "Tours. October 1953") — i.e. exactly the edition Johnson's fn 29 cites. It is uningested (no wiki page or claim references the filename), which is why the register believed it absent, but it is inraw/and directly checkable under General Rule 18. A targeted check of that file returns two occurrences of the conjoined phrase «déformation cohérente», both in Malraux's own expository voice, unquoted: - raw line 3762 (between page markers{354}at line 3756 and{355}at line 3764), on the Byzantine masters: "…mais en employant certaines d'entre elles pour atteindre une autre déformation cohérente — chargée d'une autre signification." - raw line 4660 (between{444}at line 4654 and{445}at line 4664), on El Greco: "Il ne copia pas plus le dessin des icones que leurs couleurs, mais il sut que la déformation cohérente est un moyen de création." This falsifies the Claim field as worded on two counts: (i) "the phrase déformation cohérente is Merleau-Ponty's own coinage rather than Malraux's," and (ii) the supporting sub-assertion that "Malraux's text stresses coherence of an artist's style without using the conjoined phrase 'coherent deformation'." Malraux uses the conjoined phrase, and at raw 4660 uses it as an already-settled art-historical term of his own ("la déformation cohérente est un moyen de création"). Consequence for the anchors. Evidence bullet 1 is verbatim-accurate as a report of Johnson (fn 29 verified word-for-word atraw/Merleau-Pontys Poetic of the World … (Johnson, Galen A. Carbone etc.).mdline 3364; body text verified at line 1997), but Johnson's assertion is now contradicted by the primary text he himself cites, so it can no longer carry the claim atsupportedlevel. Johnson's own local context pulls the other way as well: the body text at raw 1997 says only "the phrase is an adaptation from Malraux," and the footnote's coinage sentence is hedged — "the phrase 'coherent deformation' is Merleau-Ponty's own, a creative deformation of Malraux's text, one might say." The entry's gloss that "the footnote sharpens the adaptation into coinage" reads a hedged parenthetical as a philological finding; Johnson cites no Malraux locus for the negative and points only at Voices p. 324 / Pléiade p. 322 — a page (raw lines 3430–3438) whose subject is instinct-vs-consciousness in style and which contains no form of the phrase, i.e. Johnson's cited locus is not where Malraux uses it. Consequence for the "generous attribution" reading. Counterpressure bullet 2 requires reading MP's Signs p. 68/54 citation as crediting "creative source material" rather than phrase-origin. The raw text does not support that softening: atraw/Signs (Maurice Merleau-Ponty).mdline 820 MP puts «coherent deformation» in quotation marks and attaches footnote 14, which reads "Ibid., p. 152" (line 824) — an Ibid. chain running back through n.13/n.12/n.11 to n.10, "La Création esthétique, p. 51" (line 808). MP is giving a page-precise quotation citation to a specific Malraux volume, which is what one does when quoting, not when generously crediting an atmosphere. Internal inconsistency. The wiki's ownsupportedsibling claims#malraux-schema-precedes-mp-coherent-deformation-philological-refinement states in its Claim field that "The phrase déformation cohérente lives in the French Part III ('La Création esthétique') of the bound Voix du silence (1951)," and its Counterpressure item 2 flags the coinage question as unsettled "even granting Malraux's French prior use." The register therefore already carries asupportedclaim whose Claim field is in tension with promoting the coinage claim to equal standing. Two rival dispositions remain open and neither licenses promotion: either the phrase is Malraux's (the claim is false and belongs in retirement review), or a chronology argument is needed that this printing post-dates MP's 1952 Les Temps Modernes text and that Malraux inserted the phrase after MP — an argument the entry does not make and which would in any case require the Skira 1948 La Création esthétique p. 152 to adjudicate. Test 5 fails: the confidence rating does not survive restatement against a primary-text counter-example in the very edition the claim's sole secondary anchor cites. (Verification caveats, stated so they are not over-read: the{N}markers in the raw file are PDF page indices and may be offset by a page or two from printed Pléiade pagination; and the correspondence between Voix du silence pp. ~354/~444 and La Création esthétique p. 152 was not established. Neither caveat touches the finding that the conjoined phrase occurs in Malraux's own French prose.) - C3 supported-jury refuter objection (rival-reading lens, consolidation 2026-07-26, wf_2de1ae1f-59d / wf_f4d3dab1-358): Rival reading, now verified in
raw/: Malraux does write déformation cohérente, so MP's Signs attribution is literal and Johnson's coinage attribution is falsified at its philological root. The French Les voix du silence (NRF / La Galerie de la Pléiade) is inraw/—raw/les-voix-du-silence-(andre-malraux).md— contradicting this entry's Counterpressure bullet 1, which asserts "the Skira 1947–49 Psychologie de l'art and the bound 1951 Voix du silence (Pléiade) are both not inraw/." The check that bullet names as promotion condition (a) can therefore be run, and it returns presence, not absence: > "Et ils entendaient la transformer, non pas en se soumettant aux formes vivantes, mais en employant certaines d'entre elles pour atteindre une autre déformation cohérente — chargée d'une autre signification." > —raw/les-voix-du-silence-(andre-malraux).mdline 3762; nearest page marker{354}at line 3756; inside Troisième partie, "LA CRÉATION ARTISTIQUE" (heading at lines 3051–3053, opening at page marker{287}; Part IV begins at line 5101) — i.e. exactly the part corresponding to La Création esthétique, the Skira volume Johnson's own footnote 29 identifies as the locus MP cites from. Malraux's "une autre déformation cohérente" uses the conjoined locution as an already-established descriptor in his own idiom, not as an incidental collocation. This is the direct rival the entry never states: Malraux coined the phrase in French; Gilbert's 1953 English translation stripped it; MP's Signs citation is accurate, and Johnson — writing from the anglophone side where the locution is genuinely absent — mistook a translation gap for a coinage. That rival explains all of the entry's evidence at least as well as the coinage reading (Johnson's footnote, the English-side 0 hits, MP's citation) and, unlike the coinage reading, does not require reading MP's explicit Signs attribution (Evidence bullet 3) as non-literal. Three further pressures the entry's Counterpressure does not defeat: 1. Johnson's footnote is hedged and deflationary-readable. Raw Johnson file (raw/Merleau-Pontys Poetic of the World Philosophy and Literature (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy) (Johnson, Galen A. Carbone etc.).md) line 3364 ends: "…the phrase 'coherent deformation' is Merleau-Ponty's own, a creative deformation of Malraux's text, one might say." It is the closing aside of a bibliographic note whose preceding sentence affirms that "Merleau-Ponty's citation from Malraux on 'coherent deformation' is from the second volume"; Johnson's body text at line 1997 says flatly that "the phrase is an adaptation from Malraux." Read locally, the footnote is a witticism turning the concept on itself, not a philological finding — Johnson offers no textual demonstration of Malraux-side absence. The entry's Evidence bullet 1 concedes the body/footnote gap ("the footnote sharpens the adaptation into coinage") but treats the sharpening as authoritative rather than as the hedge it is marked as. 2. The register already carries the rival atsupported. claims#malraux-schema-precedes-mp-coherent-deformation-philological-refinement (Status: supported) states in its Claim field that "The phrase déformation cohérente lives in the French Part III ('La Création esthétique') of the bound Voix du silence (1951)." Promotingdeformation-coherente-mp-coinagetosupportedwould place twosupportedentries in direct contradiction about the same philological fact — and the raw check above decides that contradiction against this entry. 3. Both declared Wiki homes assert the rival, not the claim.wiki/concepts/coherent-deformation.mdline 27 ("The phrase is Malraux's"), line 105 ("Malraux's 1951 Voix du silence uses déformation cohérente (the substantive)"), line 148 ("Malraux originates the phrase");wiki/entities/andre-malraux.mdline 94 ("the verbal locution déformation cohérente lives in the French Part III only"). The homes do not assert what the claim asserts. Under 5-test criterion 5 themediumrating does not survive restatement: the strongest counter-position is not merely live, it is now textually verified in the corpus. Any surviving thesis is the narrower, already-supportedone (technical-conceptual distillation + translation-bridge), not coinage. - C3 supported-jury refuter objection (scope lens, consolidation 2026-07-26, wf_2de1ae1f-59d / wf_f4d3dab1-358): Scope refutation (consolidation 2026-07-26, refuter panel, scope lens): the claim is falsified as worded by the French primary source, which is in
raw/— the entry's own supported-gate condition (a) is now performable and returns PRESENCE, not absence. 1. The French Voix du silence IS inraw/, and Malraux uses the conjoined phrase in his own prose. The Counterpressure bullet 1 of this entry asserts "the Skira 1947–49 Psychologie de l'art and the bound 1951 Voix du silence (Pléiade) are both not inraw/". That absence assertion is false:raw/les-voix-du-silence-(andre-malraux).mdis ANDRÉ MALRAUX, LES VOIX DU SILENCE, NRF / La Galerie de la Pléiade (title page, lines 9–19; achevé d'imprimer Tours, October 1953). A grep of that file fordéformation[s]? cohérente[s]?returns two hits, both in Malraux's own voice, both inside Part "LA CRÉATION ARTISTIQUE" (part heading at line 3053; next part at line 5103) — i.e. inside the very part MP cites as La Création esthétique p. 152: - line 3762 (printed p. {355}), on the Byzantine masters: "…ils entendaient la transformer, non pas en se soumettant aux formes vivantes, mais en employant certaines d'entre elles pour atteindre une autre déformation cohérente — chargée d'une autre signification." - line 4660 (printed p. {444}), on El Greco: "Il ne copia pas plus le dessin des icones que leurs couleurs, mais il sut que la déformation cohérente est un moyen de création." Neither is a quotation of another author; both are Malraux's own expository prose. 2. This defeats the claim as worded, not merely its confidence. The Title and Claim fields assert flatly that "déformation cohérente is Merleau-Ponty's own coinage rather than Malraux's", resting on Johnson's Ch 3 fn 29 ("the phrase 'coherent deformation' is Merleau-Ponty's own, a creative deformation of Malraux's text, one might say"). The narrow form Johnson's footnote can carry — that Malraux "stresses the coherence of an artist's style" and MP distils a technical locution — does not survive contact with Malraux's own substantival use of the conjoined phrase twice in La Création artistique. The evidence base is a single hedged secondary footnote; the primary text it is a claim about is now in the corpus and contradicts it. Promotion tosupportedwould license citing an attribution-type claim on concept pages without provisional framing while its central negative premise (Malraux does not write the phrase) is empirically false in the source MP actually cites. 3. The entry's own stated supported gate is unmet, and now unmeetable on leg (a). Counterpressure bullet 1 states: "Promotion tosupportedwould require either (a) the French Malraux primary source ingested + verified absence of the conjoined phrase, or (b) a second secondary source corroborating Johnson's coinage attribution." Leg (a) has been discharged in the negative. No leg (b) corroboration appears in the entry's Evidence or Sources (still the same three sources as at the 2026-04-29 live promotion;Updated: 2026-04-29, no post-2026-04-29 Status History). The entry is being promoted against a gate it wrote for itself and did not pass. 4. Register-level scope equivocation with a coexistingsupportedclaim on the same two Wiki homes. claims#malraux-schema-precedes-mp-coherent-deformation-philological-refinement (Status: supported, Wiki homes coherent-deformation, andre-malraux — identical to this entry's) asserts in its Claim field: "The phrase déformation cohérente lives in the French Part III ('La Création esthétique') of the bound Voix du silence (1951)", and its Counterpressure item 2 explicitly frames the coinage question as unsettled against that philological finding. Promoting the present entry tosupportedwould put two mutually contradictorysupportedclaims — "the phrase is Malraux's, in the French Part III" and "the phrase is MP's coinage rather than Malraux's" — on the same two concept pages, with nothing in either entry's wording marking the conflict. This entry's Counterpressure papers the conflict over by treating the French question as merely "outstanding" when the register already answers it against the claim, and the raw text now confirms that answer. 5. The Wiki homes assert the opposite of the claim. coherent-deformation states "The phrase is Malraux's (from La Création esthétique, cited Signs p. 80)" (line 27), "The phrase déformation cohérente lives in the French Part III" (line 35), "Malraux's 1951 Voix du silence uses déformation cohérente (the substantive)" (line 105), and in Connections "Malraux originates the phrase" (line 148). The entry's Payoff concedes it "revises coherent-deformation's current treatment", but that revision was never applied and is now contraindicated by the primary text. Asupportedclaim whose Wiki homes flatly contradict it is not a stable synthetic claim; it is an unresolved Positions disagreement. (Related stale absence: coherent-deformation line 109 still reads "Malraux is not yet inraw/", andwiki/questions/four-element-intersection-and-precedents.mdline 58 already records that "the conjoined phrase appears in La Création esthétique p. 152 in the French original" — the wiki has been carrying both the coinage claim and its defeater simultaneously.) One honest qualification for the maintainer, which does not rescue the promotion. Theraw/copy is a printing dated Tours, October 1953 (line 23); a maximally rigorous philological finding would confirm the same wording in the 1951 first edition / Psychologie de l'art vol. II (1948–49), and the two hits sit at printed pp. {355} and {444}, not at the p. 322 / p. 152 loci Johnson and MP name. Under default-deny that unresolved edition/locus question is itself an objection: the claim's central negative premise is either false (if the 1951 text reads the same, which is overwhelmingly likely) or unverified (if the printing matters). Either way the claim does not clear the supported gate at this run. Prerequisite for any future attempt: ingest or targeted-checkraw/les-voix-du-silence-(andre-malraux).mdunder Rule 18, restate the claim in whatever narrow form survives Malraux's own substantival use (e.g. about MP's technical distillation, not about phrase-origin), and reconcile it explicitly with claims#malraux-schema-precedes-mp-coherent-deformation-philological-refinement.
Payoff
The attribution claim revises coherent-deformation's current treatment (which follows MP's Signs citation and treats the phrase as Malraux-originated and MP-reinterpreted). It also re-balances the philosophical credit line MP draws on for the universal expressive operation: if MP coined the phrase, the content of MP's usage is MP's own, even though the occasion (writing about Malraux) is responsive. This sharpens the case for treating coherent deformation as MP's distinctive technical concept (alongside science secrète and Stiftung) rather than as an inherited motif from art-historical secondary literature, and reinforces claims#ingested-corpus-four-element-gap's reading that the four-element synthesis is MP's own architectural composition.
Status History
- 2026-04-27 — created as
candidate. Evidence gap = targeted Johnson 2020 re-read. Per the deferred-task list (2026-04-25 audit), the re-read is queued; promotion toliveawaits it. - 2026-04-29 — promoted to
liveafter targeted Johnson 2020 re-read. The attribution argument is anchored in Johnson's Ch 3 footnote 29 (raw line 3364) plus the body text at raw line 1997. Promoted toconfidence: medium(fromspeculative) given the located Johnson argument and the precise Malraux philological frame Johnson supplies. Counterpressure expanded to flag Malraux not-in-raw/as the remaining soft spot for a Malraux-side textual check. - 2026-04-29 (later, fourth Phase 8 run) — Malraux-side textual check partially discharged via the 2026-04-29 Malraux 1953 Voices of Silence English-translation ingest. The English Voices contains 0 hits for "coherent deformation"; the operative English vocabulary is schema (p. 374, 376), system of significant equivalences (p. 392), style (p. 376). The English-side absence is now empirically anchored. The French-side check at La Création esthétique p. 152 / Pléiade p. 322 remains outstanding (French source still not in
raw/); confidence stays atmediumrather than promoting tosupportedbecause the French-side check is what Johnson's coinage attribution most directly depends on. - 2026-04-27 — status: created as candidate; (lifecycle backfill 2026-07-11)
- 2026-04-29 — status: candidate -> live; (lifecycle backfill 2026-07-11)
- 2026-07-26 — status: live -> contested; C3 supported-jury (consolidation 2026-07-26, wf_2de1ae1f-59d / wf_f4d3dab1-358): verifier 1 PASS / 2 UNCERTAIN / 0 FAIL, 5-test REQUEST-REVISION, refuters 3× REFUTED, AND the reviewer's decisive finding — Malraux's French Voix du silence uses "déformation cohérente" twice (raw 3762; definitional at 4660), re-verified by main-thread raw check — materially refutes the coinage thesis. Supported promotion blocked; entry restatused to contested rather than left live because the defect is in the thesis, not only the anchors.
- 2026-07-26 — objections appended to Counterpressure; Ch 3 -> Ch 6 locator repairs applied; corrective-restatement successor filed to the Harvest reservoir. Wiki homes label sync: coherent-deformation, andre-malraux re-framed from live to contested.
- 2026-07-27 — confidence: medium -> low, applying the C3 5-test reviewer's explicit recommendation (consolidation 2026-07-26) that the run restatused but did not confidence-adjust: the claim's central negative premise (Malraux does not write the conjoined phrase) is refuted by the French primary text. Counterpressure bullet 4's leg-(a) promotion condition annotated as discharged. Post-run repair surfaced by the PR #113 review; recorded in the run digest's errata section with a veto path.
- 2026-07-27 — locator erratum on the 2026-04-29 (fourth Phase 8 run) entry above, recorded rather than rewritten (that entry is a dated record of what the ingest then found): its Malraux-side numbers are the superseded raw-
{N}-marker convention. Printed Princeton/Bollingen folios are schema pp. 339, 348 (not 374, 376) and system of significant equivalences p. 355 (not 392), per the consolidation 2026-07-27 locator pass and the sibling entry claims#malraux-schema-precedes-mp-coherent-deformation-philological-refinement. The English-side absence finding the entry records is untouched. Mechanical only; no status, confidence, or thesis change.