Merleau-Ponty’s notion of gesture

Thinking about gesture immediately leads us to refer to a series of codes (theatrical, sporting or political, etc.) in which it fits. But it seems that these codes do not exhaust it: gesture goes beyond the expressions already expressed. In The Structure of Behaviour and The Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty denounced the misunderstandings of the problem of bodily gesture conveyed by classical physical-mechanical and psychological interpretations. He also criticises modern philosophical analysis, which is based on a Cartesian tradition founded on the certainty of the cogito. Merleau-Ponty proposes an alternative point of view to the proposals of the Cartesian tradition and of psychology, and invites us to reflect on the fact that gesture can at least be linked to three dimensions: the body, language, and even, beyond that, the silence within which it originates to constitute a new expression.