L’Artiste et L’Adversité

A plusieurs reprises, Merleau-Ponty tisse une correspondance entre art et histoire, entre pratique artistique et action politique : plus precisement il nous invite a former le concept d’histoire sur l’exemple de l’art. A premiere vue, un tel rapprochement pourrait paraitre abstrait, sinon provocateur, l’art etant souvent concu comme un domaine qui semble avoir peu a faire avec l’espace de l’action. Mais, nous pouvons aujourd’hui comprendre davantage l’interet de l’intuition merleau-pontienne, nous, qui faisons l’experience de la connexion etroite entre l’univers visuel et le milieu politique ou historique, comme des dimensions devenues desormais inseparables. Au fur et a mesure qu’une conception positiviste de l’histoire ou de la politique entendue comme progres, ou du moins comme projet, echoue sous nos yeux interdits, la question de l’historicite se fait de plus en plus urgente : Merleau-Ponty nous invite a penser l’histoire comme le « lieu de nos interrogations et de nos etonnements », le lieu d’une reponse, voire d’une responsabilite que nos organismes technologiques exigent. C’est a partir de l’experience de la creation artistique et de son rapport constitutif au hasard qu’une pensee de l’historicite peut s’elaborer, la ou l’esthetique merleau-pontienne rejoint le mystere d’un sens historique et esquisse implicitement une ethique de la contingence, en ce qu’elle nous appelle a un exercice de la liberte. Abstract Anna Caterina Dalmasso The Artist and the Adversity. Chance and Creation in Merleau-Ponty Throughout his works, Merleau-Ponty has developed the analogy between art and history, between art practice and political action: more precisely he invites us to think about the concept of history on the example of art. At first sight, such an equivalence could seem abstract, if not provocative, insofar as art is still sometimes regarded as a field having little to share with action. But today, experiencing the close connection between the visual and the political environment, we can understand, perhaps better than his contemporaries, what is at stake in Merleau-Ponty’s insight for a new comprehension of history. Whereas a positivist conception of history and politics understood as progress or project seems to be failing before our astonished eyes, the question of historicity becomes more and more urgent: Merleau-Ponty prompts us to think of history as a mysterious junction between facticity and intention, as the beginning of our wonder, as the place of the responsibility that our technological organisms demand. The experience of creation is the figure through which Merleau-Ponty tries to conceive contingency, which is the kernel of the Geneva conference, later called The Man and the Adversity. So, drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s constant reference to the operation of artistic creation, especially on the reference to El Greco, I aim at examining how a new conception of history can spring by a comprehension of the experience of creation. I will argue that, from the analysis of the relationship between the artist and the sensible, between the artist and her body, Merleau-Ponty comes to outline what I would call an ethics of contingency, insofar as it calls us to the exercise of our freedom.