Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T03:46:59.527Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Receptacle/Chōra: Figuring the Errant Feminine in Plato's Timaeus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Emanuela Bianchi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay undertakes a reexamination of the notion of the receptacle/chōra in Plato's Timaeus, asking what its value may be to feminists seeking to understand the topology of the feminine in Western philosophy. As the source of cosmic motion as well as a restless figurality, labile and polyvocal, the receptacle/chōra offers a fecund zone of destabilization that allows for an immanent critique of ancient metaphysics. Engaging with Derridean, Irigarayan, and Kristevan analyses, Bianchi explores whether receptacle/chōra can exceed its reduction to the maternal-feminine, and remain answerable to contemporary theoretical concerns.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , Fall 2006 , pp. 124 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1999. Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. 2nd edition. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1933. Metaphysics. Vol. 17 of Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Loeb Classical Library. 2 vols. Trans. Tredennick, H.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle, . 1969. Aristotle's physics. Trans. Apostle, H. G.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Beardsworth, Sara. 2004. Julia Kristeva: Psychoanalysis and modernity. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Bianchi, Emanuela. 2004. Teleology and Its Symptoms: Sexual Difference in the Aristotelian Cosmos. Ph.D. diss., New School for Social Research.Google Scholar
Burke, Carolyn, Schor, Naomi and Whitford, Margaret, eds. 1994. Engaging with Irigaray: Feminist philosophy and modern European thought. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Casey, Edward S. 1997. The fate of place: A philosophical history. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Chanter, Tina. 1995. Ethics of eros: Irigaray's rewriting of the philosophers. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cornell, Drucilla. 1991. Beyond accommodation: Ethical feminism, deconstruction, and the law. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cornell, Drucilla. 1994. The imaginary domain: Abortion, pornography, and sexual harassment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dean‐Jones, Lesley. 2000. Aristotle's understanding of Plato's receptacle and its significance for Aristotle's theory of familial resemblance. In Reason and necessity: Essays on Plato's “Timaeus,” ed. Wright, M. R.London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Freud and the scene of writing. In Writing and difference. Trans. Bass, A.London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1983. Geschlecht: Sexual difference, ontological difference. 32 13: 65–83.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1997. Chora. In Choral works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, ed. Kipnis, J. and Leeser, T. Trans. McCloud, Ian. New York: The Monacelli Press.Google Scholar
Descartes, René. 1968. Second meditation. In Discourse on method and the meditations. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
El‐Bizri, Nader. 2001. ’Qui ētes‐vous chora?’ 32 11: 473–90.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1953. A note upon the ’Mystic Writing‐Pad’. Trans. Strachey, James. In Collected Papers. London: The Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Fuss, Diana J. 1989. “Essentially speaking”: Luce Irigaray's language of essence. Hypatia 3 (3): 62–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuss, Diana J. 1990. Essentially speaking. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gallop, Jane. 1988. Thinking through the body. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Genova, Judith. 1994. Feminist dialectics: Plato and dualism. In Engendering origins, ed. Bar On, Bat‐Ami. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1995. Space, time, and perversion. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and time. Trans. Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E.New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985a. Speculum of the other woman. Trans. Gill, G. C.Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1985b. This sex which is not one. Trans. Porter, C.Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Irigaray, Luce. 1993. The invisible of the flesh. In An ethics of sexual difference. Trans. Burke, C. and Gill, G. C.Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kirk, G. S., Raven, J. E., and Schofield, M. 1983. The presocratic philosophers. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 2002a. Revolution in poetic language. In The portable Kristeva, ed. Oliver, K.New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 2002b. Stabat Mater. In The portable Kristeva, ed. Oliver, K.New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 2002c. Motherhood according to Giovanni Bellini. In The portable Kristeva, ed. Oliver, K.New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 2002d. Women's Time. In The portable Kristeva, ed. Oliver, K.New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and infinity. Trans. Lingis, Alphonso. Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1981. Otherwise than being or beyond essence. Trans. Lingis, Alphonso. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Liddell, Henry George, and Scott, Robert. 1940. A Greek‐English lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 1968. The intertwining—the chiasm. In The visible and the invisible. Trans. Lingis, Alphonso. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Morrow, Glenn R. 1950. Necessity and persuasion in Plato's 32 59: 147–63.Google Scholar
Ortega, Mariana. 2004. Exiled space, in‐between space: Existential spatiality in Ana Mendieta's Siluetas Series. Philosophy and Geography 7 (1): 25–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pahl, Katrin. 2001. Tropes of transport: the work of emotionality in Hegel's Phenomenology of spirit. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley .Google Scholar
Plato, . 1921. Theaetetus. Vol. 7 of Plato in twelve volumes, Loeb Classical Library. Trans. Fowler, Harold North. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Plato, . 1947. The republic. Trans. Cornford, Francis MacDonald. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Plato, . 1967. Laws. Vol. 10 of Plato in twelve volumes, Loeb Classical Library. Trans. Bury, R. G.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Plato, . 1975. Timaeus. Vol. 11 of Plato in twelve volumes, Loeb Classical Library. Trans. Rev. Bury, R. G.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Plato, . 1977. Timaeus. In Timaeus and Critias. Trans. Lee, Desmond. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Plato, . 2003. Timaeus. In Gorgias and Timaeus. Trans. Jowett, Benjamin. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Sallis, John. 1999. Chorology: On beginning in Plato's “Timaeus.” Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sallis, John. 2000. Reception. In Interrogating the tradition, ed. Scott, C. E. and Sallis, J.Google Scholar
Schor, Naomi. 1989. This essentialism which is not one: Coming to grips with Irigaray. differences 1 (2):38–58.Google Scholar
Weinbaum, Alys Eve. 1999. Marx, Irigaray, and the Politics of Reproduction. In Is feminist philosophy philosophy? Ed. Bianchi, E.Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Whitford, Margaret. 1991. Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the feminine. London: Routledge.Google Scholar