The feminine symptom : aleatory matter in the Aristotelian cosmos

332 Pages·2014·2.59 MB·English

by  Aristotle.

The Feminine Symptom

The Feminine Symptom
aleatory matter in
the aristotelian cosmos
Emanuela Bianchi
fordham university press New York 2014
this book is made possible by a collaborative grant
from the andrew w. mellon foundation.
Copyright © 2014 Fordham University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bianchi, Emanuela.
The feminine symptom : aleatory matter in the
Aristotelian cosmos / Emanuela Bianchi.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8232-6218-2 (cloth : alk. paper)—
ISBN 978-0-8232-6219-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Aristotle. 2. Teleology. I. Title.
B485.B525 2014
185—dc23
2014014676
Printed in the United States of America
17 16 15 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
For David

contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Aristotelian Causation, Reproduction,
and Accident and Chance 26
2. Necessity and Automaton: Aleatory Matter
and the Feminine Symptom 51
3. The Errant Feminine in Plato’s Timaeus 85
4. The Physics of Sexual Difference in Aristotle and Irigaray 114
5. Motion and Gender in the Aristotelian Cosmos 140
6. Sexual Difference in Potentiality and Actuality 183
Coda. Matters Arising: From the Aleatory Feminine
to Aleatory Feminism 223
Notes 243
Bibliography 291
Index 309

acknowledgments
This project has had such a long gestation that it is impossible to
acknowledge adequately all those who have contributed one way or
another to its genesis. At the very least, I should say that I am pro-
foundly grateful to a bevy of brilliant and generous interlocutors,
mentors, readers, and friends for their support and feedback, as well
as for the invaluable institutional backing, without which this work
could not have been accomplished.
Thank you to Richard Bernstein, Judith Butler, and Dmitri Niku-
lin for their immensely helpful critiques when this project was in its
early stages. In particular, Judith Butler and Kaja Silverman’s semi-
nars in the Rhetoric Department at UC Berkeley were formative for
my thinking in this book. I am grateful to the UNC Charlotte Depart-
ment of Philosophy, in particular Michael Kelly, Marvin Croy, and
Nancy Gutierrez for granting me space and time for research and
writing, including sponsoring my stay at the University of Dundee. A
semester spent at the University of Dundee as a Humanities Research
Fellow enabled great progress on the manuscript, and I thank the
School of Humanities and the Philosophy faculty, especially Rachel
Jones, for providing a rich and productive intellectual environment.
At New York University I owe Jacques Lezra, chair of the Compara-
tive Literature Department, Joy Connolly, Dean of Humanities, and
the Humanities Initiative many thanks for both moral and financial
support throughout the publication process, and Susan Protheroe
for all kinds of material assistance. I am also deeply grateful for the
unstinting support and mentorship over the years of Judith Butler,
Drucilla Cornell, Kaja Silverman, and Walter Brogan.
Earlier versions of parts of this book were delivered as papers at meet-
ings of the Ancient Philosophy Society, the Society for Phenomenology
x Acknowledgments
and Existential Philosophy, the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy,
philoSOPHIA: A Feminist Society, the Irigaray Circle, the Society for
Women in Philosophy, the American Philosophical Association, and
the Society for Literature, Science, and Arts; I am grateful to these
organizations for hosting me, and to the many invaluable conversations
that ensued in the fertile contexts they offered. I am especially thankful
to the members of the Ancient Philosophy Society, a remarkable schol-
arly community whose erudition, feedback, support, and companion-
ship have contributed to this book in immeasurable ways. In particular
I would like to thank Sara Brill, Walter Brogan, Ryan Drake, Jill Gor-
don, Josh Hayes, Sean Kirkland, Aryeh Kosman, David Farrell Krell,
Christopher Long, Jessica Mayock, Holly Moore, Michael Naas, Eric
Sanday, Michael Shaw, and Adriel Trott, without whose insights this
work would be a mere shadow of itself.
I have been exceptionally lucky that these chapters have at vari-
ous stages found fine and careful readers in Sara Brill, Rachel Jones,
Homay King, Katherine Stephenson, David Kazanjian, and members of
the UNC Charlotte Philosophy faculty reading group, all of whom gave
unsparingly of their time and provided enormously enriching feedback
for which I am hugely grateful. I particularly thank Mike Shaw, Kate
Thomas, Rebecca Hill, and two anonymous readers for their unprece-
dented generosity in reading and commenting on the entire manuscript.
I only hope I have done justice to their suggestions as the book evolved.
Any errors or failures of analysis remain my own, of course.
I thank my editors Helen Tartar and Tom Lay at Fordham Univer-
sity Press, Laura Helper-Ferris for vital editorial guidance, Tim Rob-
erts at the Modern Language Initiative for shepherding the book into
print, Michael Koch for painstaking copyedits, Andrew Joron for a
fine index, Jonathan Eburne for an important file, Sammy Cucher and
Anthony Aziz for the stunning cover image, and Elizabeth Benninger
for invaluable research assistance.
In addition to these more formal kinds of engagement, this book
has been vastly strengthened by the wisdom, conversation, friendship,
kinship, support, love, comradeship, and community of many people
in many contexts, more than I could ever hope to mention, including
Dina Al-Kassim, Paula Austin, Anthony Aziz, Ellen Babcock, Sara
Beardsworth, Cristina Beltrán, Pearl Brilmeyer, Shay Brawn, Eric
Butler, Naveen Chandra, Zahid Chaudhary, Ed Cohen, Simon Critch-
ley, Sammy Cucher, Chris Cuomo, Alison Dell, Josh Dubler, Ron-
ald Duculan, Lisa Duggan, Melissa Ehn, David Eng, Tony Freitas,