The Entangled Life

This essay positions Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology, particularly his concept of the flesh, as a porous meaning-making element through which we can reimagine the embodied relationships between humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of embodiment resonates with multiple philosophies of entanglement, such as ecophenomenology (David Abram’s philosophy of the more-than-human world and the Humilocene), critical posthumanities (Anna Tsing’s Plantationocene, Donna Haraway’s Chthulucene) and Indigenous ecologies (Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gift economy). Despite the limitations of Merleau-Ponty’s humanist legacy, his explorations of flesh and perception move beyond a narrow focus on the human self, offering a vital language for articulating the intertwined voices of human and non-human nature. In the essay we argue that this challenges the colonial mindset of separation between human and non-human and offers possibilities for a decolonized, more-than-human ecology.