Maurice Merleau-Ponty, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
Reversibility is not a symmetry between two terms that happen to face each other across a gap. It is the structure by which the sensible folds back upon itself — the touching that finds itself touched, the seeing that discovers itself visible, not as two separate events that happen to coincide, but as one ontological movement with two faces.1
The clearest figure is the two hands. My left hand touches my right hand as it palpates a thing; for a moment it seems I might catch the two experiences superimposed, the touching and the touched in one. But the coincidence always escapes at the very moment of realization: either the right hand passes over into the rank of the touched and loses its grip on the world, or it retains that grip and what the left hand palpates is only its outer covering.2
This non-coincidence is not a failure of the structure — it is the structure. The hiatus between the touching and the touched is not an ontological void but is spanned by the total being of my body; it is, as I wrote in the working notes, like the zero of pressure between two solids that makes them adhere to one another.3 The figure of the glove turned inside out clarifies what is at stake.
There is no need of a spectator stationed on each side to see both faces; it suffices that from one side I see the wrong side of the glove applied to the right side, that I touch the one through the other.4 The chiasm is precisely this: not identity, not non-identity, but inside and outside turning about one another, the same point accessible from two directions that never quite meet.
What the stroboscopic spiral shows geometrically, the body lives perceptually: the center is nowhere fixed, it is a charged field open upon an imminent spectator.5 Reversibility extends beyond touch. My voice is the same structure heard from within: like crystal, like metal, I am a sonorous being, but I hear my own vibration through my throat rather than from outside, as Malraux said — incomparable, bound to the mass of my own life as no other voice is.6
And when I am close enough to another who speaks to feel his breath and his fatigue, I almost witness in him the same birth of vociferation I know from within myself — the reversibility of phonation and hearing, the motor echo of vociferations in me.7 The circle extends outward. It extends, in fact, to the other body altogether. When what I see passes into another — this individual green of the meadow under my eyes invading his vision without quitting my own — there is no longer a problem of the alter ego, because it is not I who sees, not he who sees, but an anonymous visibility that inhabits both of us.8
The reversibility of the visible and the tangible opens what I call intercorporeal being — a presumptive domain that extends further than the things I touch and see at present, propagated by the fundamental fission of the sentient and the sensible that founds transitivity from one body to another.9 Every perception, on this account, is doubled with a counter-perception — an act with two faces, such that one no longer knows with certainty who speaks and who listens, who sees and who is seen.10
It is because of this circularity that perception seems to form itself in the things themselves rather than in a subject facing them. Activity and passivity are no longer opposed terms but the two leaves of a single movement — and this is why the chiasm cannot be thought within the For Itself and For the Other of Sartre's ontology: there are not two positive subjectivities facing each other, but two opennesses, two caverns that belong to the same stage of Being, each the other side of the other.11
every perception is doubled with a counter-perception (Kant's real opposition), is an act with two faces, one no longer knows who speaks and who listens.The Visible and the Invisible, pp. 263–265
either my right hand really passes over to the rank of touched, but then its hold on the world is interrupted; or it retains its hold on the world, but then I do not really touch it— my right hand touching, I palpate with my left hand only its outer covering.The Visible and the Invisible, p. 148
this hiatus between my right hand touched and my right hand touching... is not an ontological void, a non-being: it is spanned by the total being of my body, and by that of the world; it is the zero of pressure between two solids that makes them adhere to one another.The Visible and the Invisible, p. 148
Reversibility: the finger of the glove that is turned inside out------There is no need of a spectator who would be on each side. It suffices that from one side I see the wrong side of the glove that is applied to the right side, that I touch the one through, the other.The Visible and the Invisible, p. 263
My 'central' nothingness is like the point of the stroboscopic spiral, which is who knows where, which is 'nobody' / The I— my body chiasm: I know this, that a body is Wahrnehmungsbereit, offers itself to, opens upon... an imminent spectator, is a charged field.The Visible and the Invisible, pp. 263–265
Like crystal, like metal and many other substances, I am a sonorous being, but I hear my own vibration from within; as Malraux said, I hear myself with my throat.The Visible and the Invisible, p. 144
if I am close enough to the other who speaks to hear his breath and feel his effervescence and his fatigue, I almost witness, in him as in myself, the awesome birth of vociferation... they have their sonorous inscription, the vociferations have in me their motor echo.The Visible and the Invisible, p. 144
it is not I who sees, not he who sees, because an anonymous visibility inhabits both of us, a vision in general, in virtue of that primordial property that belongs to the flesh.The Visible and the Invisible, pp. 142–143
What is open to us, therefore, with the reversibility of the visible and the tangible, is— if not yet the incorporeal— at least an intercorporeal being, a presumptive domain of the visible and the tangible, which extends further than the things I touch and see at present.The Visible and the Invisible, pp. 142–143
every perception is doubled with a counter-perception (Kant's real opposition), is an act with two faces, one no longer knows who speaks and who listens. Speaking-listening, seeing-being seen, perceiving-being perceived circularity.The Visible and the Invisible, pp. 263–265
In reality there is neither me nor the other as positive, positive subjectivities. There are two caverns, two opennesses, two stages where something will take place— and which both belong to the same world, to the stage of Being.The Visible and the Invisible, p. 263