The feminine symptom : aleatory matter in the Aristotelian cosmos /
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| Author / Creator: | Bianchi, Emanuela, author. |
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Imprint: | New York : Fordham University Press, 2014. |
| Description: | xii, 320 pages ; 23 cm |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | |
| Format: | Print Book |
| URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/10087821 |
| 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.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> 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. |
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| Physical Description: | xii, 320 pages ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780823262182 0823262189 9780823262199 0823262197 |
