Helen Keller

American author, lecturer, and political activist (1880-1968) who became deaf and blind at the age of 18-19 months following an illness, and discovered language at the age of nearly 7 through the teaching of Anne Sullivan. Her autobiography The Story of My Life (1903; French trans. Sourde, muette, aveugle: histoire de ma vie, A. Huzard, Payot, 1915) is a primary exemplary case for Merleau-Ponty's analysis of language acquisition in the 1949-52 Sorbonne lectures and *Le problème de la parole* (1953-54).

Role in argument

Helen Keller's case is exemplary, not illustrative. It does not merely show what MP argues; it is the empirical demonstration of the cardinal thesis that language acquisition is not the addition of significations to sounds but the transformation of the perceived world itself.

PbP 77–[78v(2)] develops the Helen Keller case at length. Before language, Keller describes her experience as "en mer par un brouillard épais qui vous enveloppe d'un crépuscule blanchâtre, comme tangible" (op. cit. p. 36, cited PbP [77v(1)]). The decisive experience comes when Anne Sullivan teaches her the word water — confusion at first ("Confond les 2 mots goelet et eau"), then suddenly "tout objet avait un nom" (Keller p. 41).

MP's reading at PbP [77v(1)]:

"L'introduction de la parole change le monde perçu: 'tout ce que je touchais [...] me semblait palpiter de vie'. Tout l'être devient point d'appui de parole possible, i. e. libération des significations par le fait qu'elles sont désormais maniables. [...] Changement du rapport avec autrui."

The cardinal point: Keller's acquisition of language is not the addition of names to already-perceived objects. Tout l'être — all of being — becomes a point d'appui de parole possible (a foothold of possible speech). The world becomes maniable (manipulable, graspable) when language enters. The relation with the other changes too: "remords, i. e. réciprocité, non égocentrisme" (PbP [77v(1)] item 5).

MP also draws a critical lesson: Keller's case shows a décalage (gap, displacement) between her vécu (lived experience) and her acquired langue. "Le passage au langage laisse subsister un immense décalage, parce que chez elle le langage ne peut, faute de matériaux, être langage de son vécu. Personne en quasi = elle reçoit le langage plutôt qu'elle ne le recrée à partir de son silence" (PbP 78). The Keller case is thus also an exemplary case of narcissisme rémanent — narcissism not surmounted, only masked.

This passage is among MP's most explicit articulations of the parole vivante vs. savoir verbal extérieur distinction (Goldstein), applied to a real biographical case.

Working-note nuance: the "essence menteuse" reading

The delivered cours uses Helen Keller as positive exemplum of language transforming the perceived world. MP's Notes de travail (PbP folio [162], January 1954) contain a sharper adversarial reading that he did not publish:

"Il y a chez H. Keller un excès du linguistique sur le senti (sur le monde solitaire du senti) qui fait qu'elle ne distingue pas ce qui est pensé par elle de ce qui est appris, qu'elle écrit comme sien un texte lu mais non compris... Il y a une essence menteuse de tout ce qu'elle 'pense' et 'dit' qui tient à ce qu'elle est hors d'état de donner un fonctionnement précritique du langage en contrepoids du vécu." (PbP Notes de travail [162])

The working note articulates the décalage point sharply: because Keller's lived sensible world is too impoverished to ground her language critically, her speech and writing have a "lying essence" — they reproduce what she has been taught without being able to test it against a robust sensible foundation. The published cours softens this to the milder décalage language at PbP 78. The working note is therefore evidence that MP held a two-sided reading of the Helen Keller case: she demonstrates both (a) the world-transforming power of language and (b) the dangers of decoupled language without precritical sensible grounding. The published cours emphasizes (a); the working note also gives (b) its full weight.

Read together, the two anchors make Helen Keller a more discriminating exemplary case than the published cours alone suggests — and a more MP-adequate one, since MP's late notion of parole-as-arrachement (V&I) requires both sides of the Keller phenomenon: language as world-opening (revealing being) and language as decoupled prosody (concealing being when severed from the sensible).

Connections

  • primary exemplary case in merleau-ponty-2020-probleme-de-la-parole Part I §I "L'acquisition de la parole" — PbP 77–[78v(2)].
  • exemplary case for the parole vivante thesis — that language transforms the perceived world, not adds labels to it.
  • exemplary case for the savoir verbal extérieur limit — Keller's décalage shows what happens when acquired language outruns lived experience.
  • cited extensively in merleau-ponty-2010-child-psychology-pedagogy La conscience et l'acquisition du langage p. 19.
  • also cited by François Rostand and André Ombredane — the French psychopathology of language tradition MP is engaging.

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-2010-child-psychology-pedagogy — Helen Keller is referenced in La conscience et l'acquisition du langage (1949-50) p. 19 as a paradigm case.
  • merleau-ponty-2020-probleme-de-la-parole — PbP 77–[78v(2)] (cardinal extended treatment); also [73(18)]–[76(21)] in the affective-acquisition section preceding the Keller exemplification; and PbP Notes de travail folio [162] for the "essence menteuse" working-note nuance not published in the delivered cours.

External:

  • Keller, H. (1903) The Story of My Life. New York: Doubleday.
  • Keller, H. (1915) Sourde, muette, aveugle: histoire de ma vie. Trans. A. Huzard. Paris: Payot. — the French translation MP cites.
  • Keller, H. (2001 réédition) Sourde, muette, aveugle: histoire de ma vie. Paris: Payot & Rivage. — the modern French reissue.