181 [Corry Shores, “Body and World in Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze,” Studia Phaenomenologica XII (2012): 181–209. This is a pre-publication draft that has been repaginated to match that of the print version.] Body and World in Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze 1 Corry Shores University of Leuven Abstract: To compare Merleau-Ponty’s and Deleuze’s phenomenal bodies, I first examine how for Merleau-Ponty phenomena appear on the basis of three levels of integration: 1) between the parts of the world, 2) between the parts of the body, and 3) between the body and its world. I contest that Deleuze’s attacks on phenomenology can be seen as constructive critiques rather than as being expressions of an anti-phenomenological position. By building from Deleuze’s definition of the phenomenon and from his more phenomenologically relevant writings, we find that phenomena for him are given to the body under exactly the opposite conditions as for Merleau-Ponty, namely that 1) the world’s differences 2) appear to a disordered body that 3) comes into shocking affective contact with its surroundings. I argue that a Deleuzian theory of bodily-given phenomena is better suited than Merleau-Ponty’s model in the task of accounting for the intensity of phenomenal appearings. Keywords: Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology, Body, World 1. Introduction As Joe Hughes observes, there is “not much consensus in the current critical literature when it comes to the question of Deleuze’s relationship to phenomenology.” 2 On the one hand, Deleuze is often explicitly critical of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and phenomenology in general, and many commentators have regarded those critiques as expressing an anti- phenomenological tendency in Deleuze’s thinking. 3 Other scholars acknowledge the tensions 1 May I thank Roland Breeur, Ullrich Melle, and Nicolas de Warren of the Husserl Archives in Leuven for their contributions to this paper. 2 J. Hughes, Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, London: Continuum, 2008, p. 3. 3 See, for example, M. Foucault, “Theatrum Philosophicum,” in D. Bouchard (ed.), Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, English trans. by D. Bouchard and S. Simon, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 165–196; L. Lawlor, “The End of Phenomenology: Expressionism in Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty,” Continental Philosophy Review 31.1 (1998), pp. 15–34; D. Olkowski, Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999; L. Lawlor, Thinking through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003; D. Olkowski, “Philosophy of Structure, Philosophy of Event: Deleuze’s Critique of Phenomenology,” Chiasmi International 13 (2011), pp. 193–216; and P. Montebello, “Deleuze, une anti-phénoménologie?” Chiasmi International 13 (2011), pp. 315– 325.