Abstract

The continuing appropriation of the work of Merleau-Ponty is moved forward by this substantial and interesting book, which focuses upon the interconnections between Merleau-Ponty's original thematization of perception as the Urakt of consciousness and that vast realm of articulations that comprise not just language and speech but also art, paradigmatically represented in painting. The book is divided into four chapters: Language as Original Content of Perception, The Linguistic Act, Living Language, and Toward an Originary Act of Speech, and they are preceded by an introduction and followed by a conclusion. The method of the book is best described as "creative juxtaposition" and "immanent reading." By this I mean that Froman has ranged through the corpus of Merleau-Ponty's writings and extracted the texts that most fully, most significantly, and most illuminatingly bear upon his theme. The reader will be pleased to have here what is in effect a handy compendium of "classic" utterances that lead to extended and fruitful meditations on the continuities and ruptures between perception and articulation, both of them, it is well known, oriented toward "form" and "structure" but also situated within an overarching pre-thematic, even "tacit," matrix.