Resumen de Michel Henry and the Resistance of the Flesh

Andrew Sackin Poll

• The article addresses criticisms of Michel Henry’s formulation of auto-affection that claim it is ‘disembodied’ and ‘idealist’ by revisiting the French Spiritualist legacy, especially Maine de Biran, that informs his early work. By examining the way Henry interprets and reformulates the spiritualist sense of habit in his early works, the article traces connections between his early description of embodied experience and interpretations of Maine de Biran’s account of the ‘simple presence’ of the body, that is, given without donation, including works by Aimé Forest, Henri Gouhier, and Gabriel Mardinier. In doing so, the article puts forward a redefinition of Henry’s embodied life, no longer in terms of auto-affection, but in terms of resistance, that is, a prior given without the self-donation of the flesh. This draws Henry’s early work into dialogue with contemporary iterations of the theological turn, especially Emmanuel Falque. The essay closes with a speculative sketch of the way this reformulates the contemporary grammar of phenomenological experience.