Etnologia della percezione.  Letture di Merleau-Ponty per La fine del mondo di Ernesto De Martino

In The End of the World, the ethnological investigation, a comparative one, was to culminate in a final section, not ethnological but anthropological. Philosophy would have been handled by De Martino at the same time as a tool, object, and culminating point of ethnological research. Moreover, considered as a true cultural technique, philosophical practice must be reformed out of, and thanks to, ethnology. On the basis of a genetic study conducted in the ethnologist’s own library and among his notes and documents, our contribution will be interested in the Demartinian reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work, especially Phénoménologie de la perception and Sens et non-sens: in its theoretical context, its issues at stake, the allegiances and criticisms that De Martino will be able to develop with and against the French phenomenologist. Our paper will be particularly interested in the theme of repetition, from habit to rituals. Shedding new light on the two hidden limits of use, the self-forgetful habit and the critical moments of operative and utilizing existence, De Martino does not merely adopt the terminology of Phénoménologie de la perception, but appropriates it, enriching it with novel conceptual distinctions.