Abstract

This paper develops a notion of allowances, a designation for speech-acts indicative of the collaborative behaviour I engage in with others. Such behaviour marks a facet of my individual identity that I could not create on my own. I ground this notion of allowance in the view of the self as intentional body-consciousness developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty and John Russon. I explain the relation of this self to others on their phenomenological paradigm, and then explain the functions of speech and gesture Merleau-Ponty offers in the _Phenomenology of Perception_. In order to present my concept of allowances, I turn to J.J. Gibson's concept of affordances. Gibson's concept provides an analogue for the notion of allowance. I then explain two examples of allowances in action: gossip and truth-telling. I conclude by drawing attention to the ways these allowances are markers of the collaborative constitution of identity.