The feminine symptom : aleatory matter in the Aristotelian cosmos / Emanuela Bianchi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bianchi, Emanuela, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aristotle.

Teleology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (332 p.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

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.

Contents:

Front matter

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

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-8232-6644-3

0-8232-6221-9

0-8232-6222-7

OCLC:

889679065