Texture imaginaire du réel

Merleau-Ponty's cardinal formula for the ontological structure that the real itself is through and through woven with imaginary dimensions. Coined in L'Œil et l'Esprit (OE p. 24, 1961), the formula is the chapter-title and organizing thesis of Saint Aubert's Ch II. It names MP's systematic counter-move against Sartre's L'Imaginaire (1940) — a counter-move that traverses MP's corpus from 1946 to 1961 and eventually reorients his entire ontology.

Key Points

  • Cardinal formula (OE p. 24): MP speaks of "les traces de la vision du dedans, à la vision ce qui la tapisse intérieurement, la texture imaginaire du réel."

  • Anti-Sartrean thesis: "Voir, c'est imaginer. Et imaginer, c'est voir. Non pas dans ce sens justement critiqué par Sartre que l'image ne serait que vision affaiblie, mais dans ce sens que le principe métaphysique de la vision (= la transcendance) est imagination, i.e. dépassement de l'observable. Revoir toute la conception de l'imaginaire comme néantisation. Ce n'est pas néantisation, c'est justement ontogenèse." (EM2 186, 1959)

  • No flesh without imaginary: DESC 87, repeatedly underlined by MP in black and then red: "Il n'y a de chair qu'imaginaire."

  • Self-correction from PhP: EM2 [223]v, 16 juin 1959: "Pourtant j'ai admis dans Phénoménologie de la perception l'ambivalence de l'imaginaire et du réel" — MP acknowledges he had not yet escaped Sartre's polarity.

  • Pregnance of the invisible: OntoCart p. 173/6: "Pour comprendre cette prégnance de l'invisible dans le visible, cette chair de l'imaginaire (visibilité imminente), il faudrait élucider notre chair, i.e. comment notre vision émerge de notre corps."

Details

Sartre's three successive reductions

Saint Aubert (Ch II § 1, p. 93-94) reads Sartre as having performed a THREE-STAGE reduction of the real's imaginary texture:

  1. 1940, L'Imaginaire: strips imagination of flesh — image is "pauvre", quasi-observation, no textured context, no Erfüllung.
  2. 1943, L'Être et le Néant: defigures flesh itself as pure facticity of the pour-soi, the "trame d'inertie du poser-contre".
  3. 1947, L'homme et les choses (in Situations I): strips flesh from the perceived itself — Francis Ponge's Parti pris des choses read as exemplar of "déshumanisation des choses et minéralisation de l'homme". Sartre's lapsus: "un grand rêve nécrologique" (p. 287, MP's emphasis).

MP's counter-moves symmetrize the three reductions:

  • Re-attach flesh to image (onirisme, PbPassiv 1955, DESC 87).
  • Re-carnalize flesh as expression (S(HoAdv) 1951, PM 1951-52).
  • Re-carnalize the perceived (S(PhiOmb) 1959, OE 1961, "chair du sensible" as grain).

The imaginary texture as anti-analogon

Sartre's analogon (L'Imaginaire) and Husserl's analogon (Krisis supplement on biology) protect the purity of consciousness. MP's critique, programmatic from 1955: the analogon is a construction rétrospective, an intellectualist artifice. PhilAu3 p. 124/[43]v(63): "Chez Sartre, on se décharge sur l'analogon de ce qu'il y a de positif dans l'image pour être libre de définir l'imaginaire négativement."

MP's replacement: analogie "selon le corps" (OE p. 40-41), "monde onirique de l'analogie" (OE p. 24). The texture imaginaire is the register in which the analogon is replaced by the "ressemblance efficace" of the body as système d'équivalences.

Hanter et tapisser

MP borrows Sartre's own verbs from L'homme et les choses (1947) and turns them against him:

  • EM2 [171]v(12), 1959: "Les choses me tapissent, me hantent."
  • OE-ms 9: "Les autres qui me hantent, que je hante, et avec qui je hante un même monde."
  • VI3 p. 164, nov. 1960 (cardinal): "Notre chair tapisse et même enveloppe toutes les choses visibles et tangibles dont elle est pourtant entourée, le monde et moi sommes l'un dans l'autre."

What Sartre diagnosed as the harassing "situation" (imaginary haunts the perceiver, things carpet consciousness) MP elevates to ontological structure: the texture imaginaire IS how the perceived and the perceiver are interlaced.

The écart as structure of the texture imaginaire

MP's cardinal formula from EM2 [154]v(13bis): "Écart = perception-imperception." Perception is always already imperception — it perceives by NOT seeing the unseen sides that give the seen its depth. The invisible is what the écart presupposes; the visible is what écart delivers. The texture imaginaire is the name for this fundamental structure: not the polarity of réel and imaginaire, but their mutual écart.

From "imaginaire comme néantisation" to "imaginaire comme ontogenèse"

EM2 186, 1959: cardinal formula for the reversal. Sartre: image = negation. MP: imaginaire = ontogenesis — the imaginary is not the subtraction of being but the generative register in which being comes to presence. This is the ontological thesis: being is not given as pure positivity but is always given through the imaginary texture that carpets it.

Relation to Bachelard

MP's anti-Sartre line draws on Bachelard. NT p. 320, nov. 1960: "L'être et l'imaginaire sont pour Sartre des 'objets', des 'étants' — Pour moi ils sont des 'éléments' (au sens de Bachelard)." Bachelard gives MP the vocabulary of éléments (water, air, earth, fire) against Sartre's objets/étants. See onirisme for the "third order" formulation.

Stendhal, Breton, cristallisation

Ch II § 4 anchors the texture imaginaire in MP's long engagement with Stendhal's De l'Amour (1822) via Breton's L'Amour fou (1937). Stendhal's "cristallisation" migrates (ULL 1953 → NMS [136] 1957 → EM2 149 1959 → DESC 120): from love-cristallisation to ontological cristallisation. The real is not observed but crystallized through the imaginary.

Positions

  • saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii (Ch II entire) elevates this formula to organizing-thesis status for MP's late ontology. This was not done systematically in Saint Aubert's earlier volumes or in the standard literature, which tended to isolate the formula as an OE remark.
  • Standard readings (Madison, Barbaras, Dastur) tend to treat "texture imaginaire du réel" as a remark about painting (OE context) rather than as the general ontological thesis it is in the 1959 manuscripts.

Connections

  • replaces Sartre's polarized real/imaginary (L'Imaginaire 1940) with a textural thesis.
  • extends onirisme — the texture imaginaire is the register within which onirisme operates.
  • enables perceptual-faith — we have foi in the perceived because the perceived is textured with our imaginary adherence.
  • operates through ecart — the texture imaginaire IS the perceptual écart extended to ontology.
  • specifies figuratifs — the figuratifs (fond, ombre, horizon, silence) are the ontological grammar of the texture imaginaire.
  • anchors the chair du sensible / grain — DESC 87 links chair and imaginaire.
  • is a structural parallel to inconscient-primordial — both are carnal dimensions that escape the conscience/rien binary.
  • contrasts with the Sartrean analogon which presupposes the real/imaginary split.
  • underpins metaphoricity — metaphor operates on the texture imaginaire.

Open Questions

  • What is the precise relation between "texture imaginaire du réel" (the formula, OE) and "chair du monde" (the late ontology, VI)? Saint Aubert treats them as co-extensive without fully arguing the point.
  • If "il n'y a de chair qu'imaginaire" (DESC 87) is MP's mature position, how is it compatible with the chair du monde as "sensible et non sentant" (NT 304)? The tension requires care.
  • What would MP have said about the digital image / screen in light of the texture imaginaire? Carbone 2015 and carbone-2019-philosophy-screens develop this.

Sources

  • saintaubert-2021-etre-et-chair-ii — Ch II (entirety, p. 87-118). Also Ch IV § 3 (la transcendance à même la chair) and Ch VII § 3a.
  • merleau-ponty-1961-eye-and-mind — OE p. 24 (the cardinal formula). Also OE p. 40-41 (analogie selon le corps).
  • merleau-ponty-1968-visible-and-invisible — VI3 p. 164 (la chair enveloppe); VI2 p. 108-109 (voyant qui oublie qu'il a un corps).
  • Primary archival refs via Saint Aubert: EM2 186; [155]v(14); [171]v(12); [223]v; DESC 87; OntoCart p. 173/6; NT p. 298, p. 320; NTi-58 [330]v; NTi [356]; PbPassiv 149/NP, 155/NP; RC55 p. 68-69. Sartre polemic: L'Imagination 1936, L'Imaginaire 1940, L'Être et le Néant 1943, L'homme et les choses 1947.