Abstract

In his notes for the course entitled “The Problem of Passivity: Sleep, the Unconscious, Memory,” Merleau-Ponty describe the notion of “negative hallucination” as “a perception, but not recognized for what it is.” This essay analyses this figure as it is taken up by Merleau-Ponty in direct dialogue with Freud’s work. To begin, through the double category of the “negative” and the “perceived,” Merleau-Ponty broaches the question of the “place” of dreams by adopting an eccentric position that sheds light on an unexplored pathway of Freudian theory. Moreover, a crucial point can be found in the idea of a negative margin, that appears to implicitly configure a redefinition of the hallucinatory in the direction of chiasm. To highlight this aspect, I review in a preliminary manner some passages of Phenomenology of Perception in which the question of the “place” of negative hallucination emerges in particularly dramatic terms.