Phenomenology and its phantoms: Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Leiris.

This essay examines the figure of the phantom in the works of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and ethnographer Michel Leiris, focusing on gestures as a site of communication within colonial contexts. It argues that all communication, including gestural exchange, is haunted by historical and cultural prejudices that obscure genuine understanding, especially across racial and cultural divides. Merleau-Ponty's concept of the phantom limb illustrates how past experiences and habits shape perception and communication, while Leiris's ethnographic account in *L'Afrique fantôme* reveals the complexities and ambiguities of intercultural gestures amid colonial power imbalances. Both authors acknowledge the persistent influence of these "phantoms" on subjective knowledge and highlight the challenges—and occasional possibilities—of authentic contact between self and other in colonial encounters.