The Crystallization of the Impossible: Derrida and Merleau-Ponty at the Threshold of Phenomenology

I examine the ways that Jacques Derrida and Maurice Merleau-Ponty challenge phenomenology by rethinking presence as a relation of intimacy and alterity. Both argue that self-presence in phenomenology cannot exclude the mundane; it can only be, as Merleau-Ponty says, "a crystallization of the impossible." Drawing on this phrase, I challenge Derrida's reading of Merleau-Ponty, specifically his criticism that Merleau-Ponty privileges intimacy over alterity. Merleau-Ponty describes the chiasm as a hiatus, but whereas Derrida would insist the hiatus is an abyss, Merleau-Ponty conceives it ontologically as the fullness of an embrace. The radicality of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology can be rescued from Derrida's criticism by understanding how the embrace of self and world, located at the very threshold of contact, is a crystallization of the impossible.