The flesh of the forest: Wild being in Merleau-Ponty and Werner Herzog

The history of the sublime within aesthetics has tended to focus on the natural world. Within this history, the sublime has been a category reserved for awe-inspiring and overwhelming experiences, in which the finite subject is dwarfed by a more expansive force. Despite subjectivity being foremost in this topic, what has been overlooked, is the role the body plays in being the centre of aesthetic experience. In this paper, I will turn the tide on this omission and thematize the role of the body within the experience of the sublime. My plan for reconsidering this movement is to unite Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972) with the late thought of Merleau-Ponty, especially his enigmatic notion of "flesh" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968). In both Herzog and Merleau-Ponty, a philosophy of nature exists which challenges the dichotomy between the autonomous self encountering the objective realm of wilderness. In each case, an ambiguity undercuts the idea of wilderness existing "there" while human subjectivity remains placed "here." I will "read" the film as an instant of the chiasmatic relation between nature and humanity. Doing so, I will suggest that the reversibility between the body and the environment can be seen as an amplification of Merleau-Ponty's notion of "wild being" (l'etre sauvage).