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Father Tongue, Mother Tongue: The Back‐Story and the Forth‐Story

Dorota M. Dutsch

in Feminine Discourse in Roman Comedy: On Echoes and Voices

Efforts to separate the speech of ‘the man himself’ from that of ‘unmanly’ others are implied in ancient rhetorical and philosophical treatises. This chapter traces such efforts from Donatus, through ... More

Efforts to separate the speech of ‘the man himself’ from that of ‘unmanly’ others are implied in ancient rhetorical and philosophical treatises. This chapter traces such efforts from Donatus, through Cicero, to Aristotle and Plato, in an attempt to define the ontological status of feminine discourses in Roman comedy. The chôra, the indefinite (Derrida) and thus feminine (Kristeva, Irigaray) space of becoming in Plato's theory of creation emerges as the pivotal concept of this chapter and the most useful metaphor for the imprint of gender on the language of Roman comedy. The logic of the chôra that sanctions thinking beyond ‘either or’ and ‘neither nor’ allows us to embrace the interplay of (fe)male identities in the scripts of Plautus and Terence.Less

Reimagining Cosmology

Suzi Adams

in Castoriadis's Ontology: Being and Creation

Castoriadis's reflections on cosmology emerge from his argument that time and creation are interrelated. Through an elucidation of the overarching meaning of time, he looks to articulate ... More

Castoriadis's reflections on cosmology emerge from his argument that time and creation are interrelated. Through an elucidation of the overarching meaning of time, he looks to articulate philosophically an image of the physical universe that is neither reducible to a purely scientific or religious imaginary. Castoriadis questions traditional philosophical responses to time, and critiques the demarcation of time into either “objective” or “subjective”. He seeks to elucidate time cosmological time as the emergence of alterity, and, as such, is irreducible to space. Castoriadis offers an interpretation which draws on the Greek imaginary as a distinct grasp of the world, and highlights the radical temporality and heterogeneity of being as à-être (as the incessant autocreation of other forms), whilst still giving the social-historical its due.Less

The Alpha and the Alif: Continental Ambivalence in Geoffroy Tory’s Champ fleury (1529)

Katharina N. Piechocki

in Cartographic Humanism: The Making of Early Modern Europe

The rise of print culture in tandem with a resurgent interest in Ptolemy’s Geography prompted a radical transformation of the imagining of Europe’s continental boundaries. Geoffroy Tory, France’s ... More

The rise of print culture in tandem with a resurgent interest in Ptolemy’s Geography prompted a radical transformation of the imagining of Europe’s continental boundaries. Geoffroy Tory, France’s first royal printer and typographer and the first editor of Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s De Europa, powerfully seized these new tools to conceptualize Europe’s borders with Asia. His groundbreaking Champ fleury (1529) links diverse spatial imageries to the question of the origin and transformation of European and non-European languages. It investigates Europe’s shifting image from a landmass intimately connected with the oikoumene to an isolated entity detached from its shared heritage with Asia in the context of the formation and circulation of alphabets. The Champ fleury constitutes an astounding cartographic surface, a vibrant map upon which letters, as graphic, somatic, and numeric signs, form a new cartographic language in constant transformation and translation. In Tory’s hand, the “flowery field” of its title becomes a platform for the generation of complex cartographic signs that this chapter, following Ján Pravda, calls “cartographemes.”Less

The Receptacle

Charles P. Bigger

in Between Chora and the Good: Metaphor's Metaphysical Neighborhood

This chapter examines the views of Jacques Derrida on the concept of chora. Derrida approaches chora from the perspective of apophatic theologies in which every attributive ... More

This chapter examines the views of Jacques Derrida on the concept of chora. Derrida approaches chora from the perspective of apophatic theologies in which every attributive predicate is said to be inadequate to the essence, in truth the hyperessentuality of God. This claim elicits Derrida's interest because his idea describes how the matrix may work in articulating language, for in its ineffability it resembles the withdrawn God of mystical theology. He also holds that patristic mystical theology recognizes neither the way of affirmation or negation, but seeks that way beyond them in which the divine names direct one to a non-object from whom one receives determinations.Less

Introduction

Charles P. Bigger

in Between Chora and the Good: Metaphor's Metaphysical Neighborhood

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the philosopher Plato's concept of chora and its relation with the Good. Chora was developed and ... More

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the philosopher Plato's concept of chora and its relation with the Good. Chora was developed and originally conceptualized by Plato in his dialogue titled Timaeus. The chapter analyzes Plato's view on metaphor and suggests that he never carried out any formal analysis of metaphor. His analogical arguments often employed resemblances that were sometimes invalid. This book also examines the philosophical view of Plato on the chiasmus between chora and the Good.Less

The Place of Metaphor

Charles P. Bigger

in Between Chora and the Good: Metaphor's Metaphysical Neighborhood

This chapter examines the place of metaphor in Plato's concept of space and time granting the hypodoche/chora matrix and the Good. It suggests that through participation's ... More

This chapter examines the place of metaphor in Plato's concept of space and time granting the hypodoche/chora matrix and the Good. It suggests that through participation's window onto a world in the making and being made, these Platonic roots and the metaphor itself are no longer in favor with philosophers. In Plato's image of the divided line dianoia, or understanding, is placed on the level of exact mathematical sciences which is incompatible with its founding conditions in images and shadows.Less

The Matrix

Charles P. Bigger

in Between Chora and the Good: Metaphor's Metaphysical Neighborhood

This chapter examines the concept of Plato's matrix in relation to the chora and the Good. It explains that Plato identifies the receptacle's primordial contents with shape, ... More

This chapter examines the concept of Plato's matrix in relation to the chora and the Good. It explains that Plato identifies the receptacle's primordial contents with shape, powers, and feeling, with the passions expressed in the elementary shapes. These forms, feelings, and powers are not subjective/expressive or objective/physicalistic. The receptacle is a container of forces or a homologous container of feelings and, as chora, matrix of their ontic expression, real or virtual, and is the common root of what has hitherto been taken to be the mind/body dualism.Less

"To the Things Themselves"

Charles P. Bigger

in Between Chora and the Good: Metaphor's Metaphysical Neighborhood

This chapter analyzes metaphor in the Platonic context where the Good is supreme and not Being. It explains that Being has truth, and not existence, as its primary sense. It ... More

This chapter analyzes metaphor in the Platonic context where the Good is supreme and not Being. It explains that Being has truth, and not existence, as its primary sense. It analyzes other philosophers' view on Being and existence, and suggests that Being may be identified with existence and this is consistent with Plato's concept of becoming, the primordial diversification of the matrix. With this, it is possible to associate the economics of dwelling with Plato's chora.Less

Of Determination-in-the-last-instance as Destruction of the Principle of Sufficient Determination

in Theory of Identities

This brief chapter focuses on the notions of “determination” and “the determined” as philosophy has understood them, and explains why for non-philosophy the determined precedes determination. It goes ... More

This brief chapter focuses on the notions of “determination” and “the determined” as philosophy has understood them, and explains why for non-philosophy the determined precedes determination. It goes on to elaborate the fundamental notion of “determination-in-the-final-instance” (borrowed from Marx) on which non-philosophy rests, and to distinguish philosophical singularity from non-philosophical singularity.Less

The Waiting Game

Hunter H. Gardner

in Gendering Time in Augustan Love Elegy

This chapter initiates part two and shifts the focus of the book from the self-fashioning of the amator to examine the generic qualities of the courtesan-puella. Through analysis of the temporal ... More

This chapter initiates part two and shifts the focus of the book from the self-fashioning of the amator to examine the generic qualities of the courtesan-puella. Through analysis of the temporal language of Propertius 1.3, Tibullus 1.3 and Ovid’s Remedia Amoris, it argues that the beloved’s initial associations with mora and repetition, articulated through temporal and spatial tropes (e.g., her characterization as a Penelope figure, her description as lenta, “slow”) creates an arena in which the amator might stage his resistance to linear time. This chapter draws heavily on Julia Kristeva’s theory of the chora (1974) and “women’s time” (1979), which defines feminine subjectivity according to properties of eternity, cyclicality, and repetition, and in opposition to the linear movements of history associated with masculine subjectivity.Less

Theogony (Θεογονία‎): Godhead and God

Ray L. Hart

in God Being Nothing: Toward a Theogony

Theogony addresses primordial Godhead vis-à-vis God-aborning: that is, how God is eternally in process of self-creation, understood as a self-relation. The doctrine of Trinity arose in Christianity ... More

Theogony addresses primordial Godhead vis-à-vis God-aborning: that is, how God is eternally in process of self-creation, understood as a self-relation. The doctrine of Trinity arose in Christianity to make multiple sacred epiphanies cohere with one divine God, as well as with the doctrine of creation. The second coherence requires an essential connection between the internal differentiation of the divine life (the Creator) and the external differentiation of what is by-God but not God and not mere nothing (ouk on): creation. The orthodox account failed to achieve this coherence because the divine inner differentiation, Trinity, was declared to be immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, and so on. This chapter reimagines Trinity, exploring the creational relations within and between each trinitarian locus as potencies of interrelationality, only some of which are actualized in time.Less

Derrida and Messianic Atheism

Richard Kearney

in The Trace of God: Derrida and Religion

This essay addresses the question of Derrida's messianic atheism. It begins with a discussion of Derrida's development of Levinas's ethical understanding of atheism as a specifically Jewish ... More

This essay addresses the question of Derrida's messianic atheism. It begins with a discussion of Derrida's development of Levinas's ethical understanding of atheism as a specifically Jewish messianism before exploring the relationship between deconstruction and such related terms as negative theology, eschatology, chora and anatheism. It concludes with a critical review of three dialogues on the question of religion conducted between Derrida and the author, Richard Kearney, between 1982 and 2001.Less

The Errant Feminine in Plato’s Timaeus

Emanuela Bianchi

in The Feminine Symptom: Aleatory Matter in the Aristotelian Cosmos

This chapter returns to Plato’s Timaeus as the cosmological precursor of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. It focuses on the central part of the dialogue, where a “third kind” or “errant cause” is ... More

This chapter returns to Plato’s Timaeus as the cosmological precursor of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. It focuses on the central part of the dialogue, where a “third kind” or “errant cause” is added to Being and Becoming as a proto-material context or space which provides the basis for Being’s embodiment as the world of Becoming in the cosmogony. Variously called receptacle, chôra (space), necessity, gold, a nurse, a mother, a wax tablet, the substrate of an ointment, the receptacle/chôra is a restless figure, and also the source of cosmic motion. The relationship among being, becoming, and persuasion is examined, and the feminine valence of the receptacle/chôra is explored in relation to its uptake by Kristeva, Irigaray, Derrida, and Sallis. The errancy and femininity of the receptacle/chôra means that it offers a certain potential for aleatory feminism that is reduced, pacified, and systematized in Aristotelian matter.Less

Revolutionary Objects in Elizabeth Inchbald’s Nature and Art

Mark Lounibos

in Material Transgressions: Beyond Romantic Bodies, Genders, Things

Following a feminist/materialist concept of “choratic reading,” this chapter argues that Elizabeth Inchbald's English Jacobin novel Nature and Art highlights environmental agency in the context of ... More

Following a feminist/materialist concept of “choratic reading,” this chapter argues that Elizabeth Inchbald's English Jacobin novel Nature and Art highlights environmental agency in the context of political and social injustice. Inchbald’s use of chiasmic irony further reveals how the disavowal of non-human agency acts as the very condition for exploitation of both non-human and human actors, particularly the unpaid menial, reproductive and nutritive work of women in late-eighteenth-century England. In this sense, there is nothing more “environmental” than the laboring, gendered, and exploited female body. This chapter suggests that future study of Inchbald focus on the networks of human and non-human agents in her work and how these networks gesture towards a radical political ecology.Less

Mystical Gibberish or Renegade Discourse?: Poetic Language According to Orlando

Christopher Brown

in Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Woolf

This chapter explores how Virginia Woolf's Orlando refigures adult subjectivity by restoring the fluid dynamics of the semiotic chora to relationships, thus moving away from the patriarchal ordering ... More

This chapter explores how Virginia Woolf's Orlando refigures adult subjectivity by restoring the fluid dynamics of the semiotic chora to relationships, thus moving away from the patriarchal ordering of language that seems to haunt Julia Kristeva's approach to culture. In a biography of Melanie Klein, Kristeva defends psychoanalysis as “an ethics of subjective emancipation” that defies identity politics by recognizing the “sexual polymorphism” in all persons. The statement alludes to Kristeva's own concept of the semiotic chora, a “receptacle” of drives and affects that bond mother and infant prior to the Oedipal complex and the advent of subjectivity. The rest of the chapter discusses the configuration of repression and poetic expression in Orlando, and how the novel challenges the notion that sexual identity determines one's relation to an archaic maternal principle and reveals the contingency of Kristeva's formulation on a paternal model of culture.Less

Hidden Wisdom: A Theology of Presence and Place

Paul S. Fiddes

in Seeing the World and Knowing God: Hebrew Wisdom and Christian Doctrine in a Late-Modern Context

The late-modern objection to a dominating subject can be re-cast as the problem of presence, any forcing of the presence of the human self and an omnipresent God on the world. Nevertheless, the ... More

The late-modern objection to a dominating subject can be re-cast as the problem of presence, any forcing of the presence of the human self and an omnipresent God on the world. Nevertheless, the late-modern mood shows a quest for a ‘place’ — especially in the chora of Heidegger, Derrida, and Julia Kristeva — which is not a literal place but which keeps us alert to the other and to promise of the new. In Job 28, Baruch 3-4, and Ben Sira 1:1-10 wisdom is portrayed as hidden due to its expanse and complexity, not as a phase of a supposed ‘wisdom myth’ in which Wisdom is hidden in some literal place. Thus, participation in God can be expressed as entering an open space, or a non-literal ‘place’ which God opens up in the perichoresis of divine relations. To have a place in the world is to live, through wisdom and in God, as present to others without imposing our presence on them.Less