Dorota M. Dutsch
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199533381
- eISBN:
- 9780191714757
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199533381.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Ancient scholiasts and modern scholars have long been aware of a specialized feminine vocabulary (terms of endearment, a special word for ‘please’, and interjections) used by the authors of Roman ...
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Ancient scholiasts and modern scholars have long been aware of a specialized feminine vocabulary (terms of endearment, a special word for ‘please’, and interjections) used by the authors of Roman comedy. This study investigates the cultural implications of these linguistic choices for female characters. Lexical mannerisms are, it emerges, only one manifestation of a larger tendency to portray women as disregarding of interpersonal boundaries and moral principles in their attitudes towards others and themselves. Yet comedy also employs allegedly feminine features of speech as a way to undermine masculine identities, creating ambiguous figures such as the comic lover. Conversely, masculine points of view are often grafted onto the speech of comedic women. Most comedic roles thus represent both the dominant cultural discourse (male) and the voices this discourse attempts to exclude (female). The tension between these voices, which constitutes an implicit theme in the first half of this study, takes center stage in the second half. This part of the book explores the interfaces between the feminine discourses of Roman comedy and other ancient perceptions about gender and speech. Contemporary Roman notions of gender and boundaries, and Plautus' use of bacchanalia as a metaphor for acting, come into focus first. The narrative moves further away from Plautus and Terence, to examine Greek and Roman assumptions about identity and language, and then moves to propose that the Platonic concept of the chôra is a particularly useful lens for examining the feminine in Roman comedy.Less
Ancient scholiasts and modern scholars have long been aware of a specialized feminine vocabulary (terms of endearment, a special word for ‘please’, and interjections) used by the authors of Roman comedy. This study investigates the cultural implications of these linguistic choices for female characters. Lexical mannerisms are, it emerges, only one manifestation of a larger tendency to portray women as disregarding of interpersonal boundaries and moral principles in their attitudes towards others and themselves. Yet comedy also employs allegedly feminine features of speech as a way to undermine masculine identities, creating ambiguous figures such as the comic lover. Conversely, masculine points of view are often grafted onto the speech of comedic women. Most comedic roles thus represent both the dominant cultural discourse (male) and the voices this discourse attempts to exclude (female). The tension between these voices, which constitutes an implicit theme in the first half of this study, takes center stage in the second half. This part of the book explores the interfaces between the feminine discourses of Roman comedy and other ancient perceptions about gender and speech. Contemporary Roman notions of gender and boundaries, and Plautus' use of bacchanalia as a metaphor for acting, come into focus first. The narrative moves further away from Plautus and Terence, to examine Greek and Roman assumptions about identity and language, and then moves to propose that the Platonic concept of the chôra is a particularly useful lens for examining the feminine in Roman comedy.
Dorota M. Dutsch
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199533381
- eISBN:
- 9780191714757
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199533381.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
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 ...
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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
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.
Charles P. Bigger
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823223503
- eISBN:
- 9780823235117
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823223503.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
Plato's chora as developed in the Timaeus is a creative matrix in which things arise and stand out in response to the lure of the Good. Chora is paired with the Good, its polar ...
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Plato's chora as developed in the Timaeus is a creative matrix in which things arise and stand out in response to the lure of the Good. Chora is paired with the Good, its polar opposite; both are “beyond being” and the metaphors hitherto thought to disclose the transcendent. They underlie Plato's distinction of a procreative gap between being and becoming. The chiasmus between the Good and chora makes possible their mutual participation in one another. This gap makes possible both phenomenological and cosmological interpretations of Plato. Metaphor is restricted to beings as they appear in this gap through the crossing of metaphor's terms, terms that dwell with, rather than subulate, one another. Hermeneutically, through its“is”we can see something being engendered or determined by that crossing. The book's larger goal is to align the primacy of the Good in Plato and Christian Neoplatonism with the creator God of Genesis and the God of love in the New Testament.Less
Plato's chora as developed in the Timaeus is a creative matrix in which things arise and stand out in response to the lure of the Good. Chora is paired with the Good, its polar opposite; both are “beyond being” and the metaphors hitherto thought to disclose the transcendent. They underlie Plato's distinction of a procreative gap between being and becoming. The chiasmus between the Good and chora makes possible their mutual participation in one another. This gap makes possible both phenomenological and cosmological interpretations of Plato. Metaphor is restricted to beings as they appear in this gap through the crossing of metaphor's terms, terms that dwell with, rather than subulate, one another. Hermeneutically, through its“is”we can see something being engendered or determined by that crossing. The book's larger goal is to align the primacy of the Good in Plato and Christian Neoplatonism with the creator God of Genesis and the God of love in the New Testament.
Hunter H. Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199652396
- eISBN:
- 9780191745782
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199652396.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This project examines how and why time is gendered in Latin love elegy, so that it appears to affect men and women differently. Drawing on recent efforts to situate the elegies of Propertius, ...
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This project examines how and why time is gendered in Latin love elegy, so that it appears to affect men and women differently. Drawing on recent efforts to situate the elegies of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid in their social and political milieu, the book considers the genre’s brief flowering during the Augustan Principate. Part one argues that imperatives of the new regime, encouraging a younger generation of loyalists to participate in the machinery of government, put temporal pressures on the elite male that shape the amator’s (or “poet-lover’s”) resistance to entering a course of civil service and prompt his withdrawal into the arms of a courtesan, and therefore unmarriageable, beloved. Part two of the book examines the divergent temporal experiences of the amator and his beloved puella (“girl”) through the lens of “women’s time” (le temps des femmes) and the chora as theorized by psycholinguist Julia Kristeva. Kristeva’s model of feminine subjectivity as defined by repetition, cyclicality, and eternity allows us to understand better how the beloved’s marginalization from the realm of historical time proves advantageous to her amator wishing to defer entrance into civic life. The antithesis between the properties of “women’s time” and the linear momentum that defines masculine subjectivity, moreover, demonstrates how “women’s time” ultimately thwarts the amator’s often promised generic evolution.Less
This project examines how and why time is gendered in Latin love elegy, so that it appears to affect men and women differently. Drawing on recent efforts to situate the elegies of Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid in their social and political milieu, the book considers the genre’s brief flowering during the Augustan Principate. Part one argues that imperatives of the new regime, encouraging a younger generation of loyalists to participate in the machinery of government, put temporal pressures on the elite male that shape the amator’s (or “poet-lover’s”) resistance to entering a course of civil service and prompt his withdrawal into the arms of a courtesan, and therefore unmarriageable, beloved. Part two of the book examines the divergent temporal experiences of the amator and his beloved puella (“girl”) through the lens of “women’s time” (le temps des femmes) and the chora as theorized by psycholinguist Julia Kristeva. Kristeva’s model of feminine subjectivity as defined by repetition, cyclicality, and eternity allows us to understand better how the beloved’s marginalization from the realm of historical time proves advantageous to her amator wishing to defer entrance into civic life. The antithesis between the properties of “women’s time” and the linear momentum that defines masculine subjectivity, moreover, demonstrates how “women’s time” ultimately thwarts the amator’s often promised generic evolution.
Suzi Adams
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234585
- eISBN:
- 9780823240739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234585.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
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 ...
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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
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.
Katharina N. Piechocki
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226641188
- eISBN:
- 9780226641218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226641218.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
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 ...
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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 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.”
Charles P. Bigger
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823223503
- eISBN:
- 9780823235117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823223503.003.0016
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
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 ...
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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
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.
Charles P. Bigger
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823223503
- eISBN:
- 9780823235117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823223503.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
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 ...
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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
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.
Charles P. Bigger
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823223503
- eISBN:
- 9780823235117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823223503.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
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 ...
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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
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.
Charles P. Bigger
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823223503
- eISBN:
- 9780823235117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823223503.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
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, ...
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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
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.
Charles P. Bigger
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823223503
- eISBN:
- 9780823235117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823223503.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
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 ...
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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
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.
Ray L. Hart
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226359625
- eISBN:
- 9780226359762
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226359762.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
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 ...
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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
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.
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231168946
- eISBN:
- 9780231541459
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231168946.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
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 ...
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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
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.
Hunter H. Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199652396
- eISBN:
- 9780191745782
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199652396.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
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 ...
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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
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.
Irina Aristarkhova
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231159296
- eISBN:
- 9780231504089
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231159296.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
The question “Where do we come from?” has fascinated philosophers, scientists, and artists for generations. This book reorients the question of the matrix as a place where everything comes from ...
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The question “Where do we come from?” has fascinated philosophers, scientists, and artists for generations. This book reorients the question of the matrix as a place where everything comes from (chora, womb, incubator) by recasting it in terms of acts of “matrixial/maternal hospitality” producing space and matter of and for the other. This book theorizes such hospitality with the potential to go beyond tolerance in understanding self/other relations. Building on and critically evaluating a wide range of historical and contemporary scholarship, it applies this theoretical framework to the science, technology, and art of ectogenesis (artificial womb, neonatal incubators, and other types of generation outside of the maternal body) and proves the question “Can the machine nurse?” is critical when approaching and understanding the functional capacities and failures of incubating technologies, such as artificial placenta. The book concludes with the science and art of male pregnancy, positioning the condition as a question of the hospitable man and newly defined fatherhood and its challenge to the conception of masculinity as unable to welcome the other.Less
The question “Where do we come from?” has fascinated philosophers, scientists, and artists for generations. This book reorients the question of the matrix as a place where everything comes from (chora, womb, incubator) by recasting it in terms of acts of “matrixial/maternal hospitality” producing space and matter of and for the other. This book theorizes such hospitality with the potential to go beyond tolerance in understanding self/other relations. Building on and critically evaluating a wide range of historical and contemporary scholarship, it applies this theoretical framework to the science, technology, and art of ectogenesis (artificial womb, neonatal incubators, and other types of generation outside of the maternal body) and proves the question “Can the machine nurse?” is critical when approaching and understanding the functional capacities and failures of incubating technologies, such as artificial placenta. The book concludes with the science and art of male pregnancy, positioning the condition as a question of the hospitable man and newly defined fatherhood and its challenge to the conception of masculinity as unable to welcome the other.
Richard Kearney
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262090
- eISBN:
- 9780823266388
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262090.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of 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 ...
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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
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.
Emanuela Bianchi
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262182
- eISBN:
- 9780823266449
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262182.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
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 ...
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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
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.
Inez Van Der Spek
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780853238140
- eISBN:
- 9781781380444
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853238140.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In her book The Mother/Daughter Plot, Marianne Hirsch investigates the divergent versions of the family romance that surface in female-authored novels by focusing on the relation between mothers and ...
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In her book The Mother/Daughter Plot, Marianne Hirsch investigates the divergent versions of the family romance that surface in female-authored novels by focusing on the relation between mothers and daughters. This chapter examines James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, as a mother/daughter narrative in the guise of science fiction. More specifically, it reads the text as a choric fantasy; the chora, a notion derived from Julia Kristeva, refers to the maternally connoted dimension of the construction of the subject, which stands in a dialogical relation to the paternally connoted symbolic. By reading Tiptree's text in light of Kristeva's theory, the chapter analyses the narrative text and the feminist reception of Kristeva's theory of the maternal. It also argues that mother/daughter plots in science fiction may be expressed in rather unusual and sometimes opaque terms, such as in the case of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’.Less
In her book The Mother/Daughter Plot, Marianne Hirsch investigates the divergent versions of the family romance that surface in female-authored novels by focusing on the relation between mothers and daughters. This chapter examines James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, as a mother/daughter narrative in the guise of science fiction. More specifically, it reads the text as a choric fantasy; the chora, a notion derived from Julia Kristeva, refers to the maternally connoted dimension of the construction of the subject, which stands in a dialogical relation to the paternally connoted symbolic. By reading Tiptree's text in light of Kristeva's theory, the chapter analyses the narrative text and the feminist reception of Kristeva's theory of the maternal. It also argues that mother/daughter plots in science fiction may be expressed in rather unusual and sometimes opaque terms, such as in the case of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’.
Mark Lounibos
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781789621778
- eISBN:
- 9781800341463
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789621778.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
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 ...
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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
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.
Christopher Brown
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780989082624
- eISBN:
- 9781781384961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780989082624.003.0025
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
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 ...
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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
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.
