flesh. Merleau-Ponty (VI, 264) writes that the active and passive poles of the flesh are folded around one another. Just as a fold in a paper creates an outside and an inside that run across one another and can be reversed, in the flesh the active and passive poles can be reversed such that it is no longer clear who or what watches (or touches) and who or what is being watched (or touched). Rather than being the point at which things diverge, difference, at the level of the flesh, is a turning point, a point where one thing can turn into its so-called inverse. Thus, difference in the flesh is not so much a difference that separates but a difference that connects.
How, then, does Merleau-Ponty describe the unity of the flesh? Two notions that often return in this context are “style” and “typicality” (VI, 171; PriP, 16). What, one might ask, is the meaning of these notions in common terms? When one speaks of a literary style or a certain type of person, for example, we do not mean that every book subsumable under this style, or all the people of that specific type, shares some common elements. On the contrary, while one person of this type may be humorous, handsome, and intelligent, a second one may be smart only, while a third may be good-looking and funny. The same is true of books, where sharing a style need not imply a convergence in theme, register, plot structure, and so on. Moreover, the elements that connect books or persons of a same style or type are embodied differently in each book or person. Style or type is defined not by a common identity, but by a jumble of elements that refer to one another. A new book subsumed under a specific style, for example, will resemble as well as differ from the prototypical example that embodies this style. The relation between different works of one style is thus a relation of ever-shifting rapprochements and estrangements.
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