Title
The Feminine Symptom : Aleatory Matter in the Aristotelian Cosmos / Emanuela Bianchi.
ISBN
9780823262212
Published
New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2014]
Copyright
©2014
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (336 p.)
Item Number
10.1515/9780823262212 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification
185
Summary
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.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780823262199
Frontmatter
contents
acknowledgments
Introduction
chapter one. Aristotelian Causation, Reproduction, and Accident and Chance
chapter two. Necessity and Automaton
chapter three. The Errant Feminine in Plato's Timaeus
chapter four. The Physics of Sexual Difference in Aristotle and Irigaray
chapter five. Motion and Gender in the Aristotelian Cosmos
chapter six. Sexual Difference in Potentiality and Actuality
Coda: Matters Arising
notes
bibliography
index