@article{1480660,
      recid = {1480660},
      author = {Bianchi, Emanuela,},
      title = {The Feminine Symptom : Aleatory Matter in the Aristotelian  Cosmos /},
      pages = {1 online resource (336 p.)},
      abstract = {The first English-language study of Aristotle's natural  philosophy from a continental perspective, the Feminine  Symptom takes as its starting point the problem of female  offspring. 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.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1480660},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823262212},
}