SOURCE: Silverman, Hugh J. “Between Merleau-Ponty and Postmodernism.” In Merleau-Ponty, Hermeneutics, and Postmodernism, edited by Thomas W. Busch and Shaun Gallagher, pp. 139-47. Albany: State University of New York Press.

In the following essay, Silverman examines Merleau-Ponty's role in postmodernist theory.

In Merleau-Ponty's day, there would not have been a discourse about the question of Postmodernism.¹ In Merleau-Ponty's day, there would not have been an issue about his relation to Deconstruction. In Merleau-Ponty's day, the issue of a post-hermeneutics or even a post-structuralism would not have occupied any attention at all. When Merleau-Ponty died in 1961, his most significant accomplishment had been to establish a link between phenomenology (as he practiced it) and structuralism (as he understood it). The question to be posed now is not only whether there is a relation between Merleau-Ponty's thought and postmodernism but also what that place should be. While the first part of...