Andréa Delestrade - The Universal Bodies of Nature: Rethinking Chakrabarty’s Anthropocene Philosophy of History with Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature

Season 9 continues with a recording from our 2024 annual conference, Embodiment and History. This episode features a presentation from Andréa Delestrade Abstract: Is there a possibility to think the ecological crisis through the logic of History, or is the Modern concept of ‘History’ rather driven to its end? I examine Chakrabarty’s and Merleau-Ponty’s strategies to end ‘History’ in their reflections on Nature, and I argue that if Chakrabarty’s diagnosis of the necessity to end ‘History’ to give space to ecological thinking is right, Merleau-Ponty’s strategy proves more effective, as it enables us to think the philosophical end of ‘History’ while retaining the necessity of a political ecology attentive to differentiation and domination. I first develop Chakrabarty’s insights on the exhaustion of ‘History’ as a concept, both in its Eurocentric and anti-Eurocentric variations, and the need to replace it with a negative universal History which substitutes a positive teleology (being-toward-freedom) for a negative teleology (being-toward-catastrophe), and de-centers human subjectivity and freedom in a phenomenologically empty ‘species universalism’. I then argue that evacuating the body, the possibility of phenomenological apprehension and hence of thinking particularity, while retaining a universalising teleological dynamic, leads Chakrabarty to a Eurocentric status quo, that is, an abstract universalism that flattens out the thought of difference. I finally turn to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of Nature, and argue that it offers us a productive articulation of the philosophical experience of Nature, including in its contemporary destruction, and the political differentiation and domination at stake in this ecological crisis. I provide a phenomenological apprehension of the climate crisis, albeit a non-Eurocentric one, which would not be predicated on European or Anthropocene-like universalism, by insisting on two features of his philosophy of Nature: first, the chiasmic intertwining of Nature and History (which recasts universality as foundational); second, the necessity of institution and expression in this intertwining, which gives space to think the political condition of the climate crisis, in its sedimentation, domination, and creativity. Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2024, co-organised with University of the West of England. The conference was held in Bristol on the theme of 'Embodiment and History'. Biographical information of speakers is taken from the programme of that event and therefore may not be up-to-date. The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/ About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/