The feminine symptom
Subtitle: aleatory matter in the Aristotelian cosmos
By: Emanuela Bianchi
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 2014
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780823262182; 9780823262199
Subjects: Teleology; Geschlechtsunterschied; Feminismus; Teleologie
Description: The Feminine Symptom takes as its starting point the problem of female offspring for Aristotle: If form is transmitted by the male and the female provides only matter, how is a female child produced? Aristotle answers that there must be some fault or misstep in the process. This inexplicable but necessary coincidence--sumptoma in Greek--defines the feminine symptom. Departing from the standard associations of male-activity-form and female-passivity-matter, Bianchi traces the operation of chance and spontaneity throughout Aristotle's biology, physics, cosmology, and metaphysics and argues that it is not passive but aleatory matter--unpredictable, ungovernable, and acting against nature and teleology--that he continually allies with the feminine. Aristotle's pervasive disparagement of the female as a mild form of monstrosity thus works to shore up his polemic against the aleatory and to consolidate patriarchal teleology in the face of atomism and Empedocleanism. Bianchi concludes by connecting her analysis to recent biological and materialist political thinking, and makes the case for a new, antiessentialist politics of aleatory feminism.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-308) and index.
Table of contents: title: Aristotelian causation, reproduction, and accident and chance; title: Necessity and Automaton : aleatory matter and the feminine symptom; title: The errant feminine in Plato's Timaeus; title: The physics of sexual difference in Aristotle and Irigaray; title: Motion and gender in the Aristotelian cosmos; title: Sexual difference in potentiality and actuality; title: Coda. Matters arising : from the aleatory feminine to aleatory feminism.