Phenomenology of Body and Place Drawing on Merleau-Ponty Case Study: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Merleau-Ponty, the prominent phenomenologist of the 20th century has noted the phenomenology of perception. He argued that perception is a corporal (physical) phenomenon. In other words, it is the body which percieves not the mind. The preset study is an attempt based on Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of perception and corporeal sensibility to highlight the importance of human situatedness expressed through place and place experience. To this end, experimental evidence derived from the magical realism novel of One Hundred Yyears of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is used so as to elaborate and generalize the philosophical assertion of Merleau-Ponty. Accordingly, present study is of descriptive-analytic type and data gathering was done through library method in which the researcher explains and elucidates the why and how of the issue and then analyses it. Last but not least, phenomenological assertion of Merleau-Ponty was approved and outstanding elements pointing to human situatedness and place experience was found.