Article
Being Touched by Wellness: Merleau-Ponty, Nancy and the Intensive Care Unit
Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology
(2024)
Abstract
In this paper I meditate on what it means to be well by interspersing my reflections on my time in an Intensive Care Unit with my sister, Bronzino’s 1560 painting of Noli me Tangere, along with Jean Luc Nancy’s book by this name, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on embodied movement. I conclude that wellness is a stance before death; love and joy belong to wellness but can neither be planned for nor made to happen. In keeping with the coloniality of which the Western medical system is a part, the normative stance for caregiving in the ICU does not take into account the complexity and interconnectedness of communicative contact, or recognize that contact happens when unexpected. There is contact between bodies, but it is not about presence, about one body physically touching another; the contact happens elsewhere.
Keywords
- Intensive Care Unit; Love; Merleau-Ponty; Jean-Luc Nancy; Touch
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer July 18, 2024
DOI
BEING TOUCHED BY WELLNESS: MERLEAU-PONTY, NANCY AND THE INTENSIVE CARE UNITWestern UniversityPUNCTAJournal of CriticalPhenomenologyHELEN A. FIELDINGDOI: https://doi.org/10.61372/PJCP.v7i1.4
Citation Information
Helen A Fielding. "Being Touched by Wellness: Merleau-Ponty, Nancy and the Intensive Care Unit" Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology Vol. 7 Iss. 1 (2024) p. 42 - 56 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/helen_fielding/37/