The Observed Observer: Reversibility and Non-Coincidence in Hamlet and Merleau-Ponty

In Hamlet, observers are divided from themselves because they are tangible from where they touch, visible from where they see, and hearable from where they speak. Although these reversible dimensions of our experience necessarily envelop one another, they can never coincide with one another. In this regard, Hamlet has an unexpected affinity with the thinking of Merleau-Ponty, whose entire later philosophy is dedicated to exploring “the coiling over of the visible upon the seeing body, of the tangible upon the touching body, which is attested when the body sees itself, touches itself seeing and touching the things, such that, simultaneously, as tangible it descends among them, as touching it dominates them all and draws this relationship and even this double relationship from itself, by dehiscence or fission of its own mass.” In my essay, Merleau-Ponty reads Hamlet, and reversibly, Hamlet reads Merleau-Ponty, in order to explore what it means ‘to make seeing visible.’