Otherwise Than the Binary

Description

Otherwise Than the Binary approaches canonical texts and concepts in Ancient Greek philosophy and culture that have traditionally been understood as examples of binary thinking, particularly concerning sexual difference. In contrast to such patriarchal logic, the essays within this volume explore how many of these seemingly strict binaries in ancient culture and thought were far more permeable and philosophically nuanced. Each contribution asks if there are ways of thinking of antiquity differently—namely, to examine canonical works through a lens that expounds and even celebrates philosophies of difference so as to discover instances where authors of antiquity valorize and uphold the necessity of what has been seen as feminine, foreign, and/or irrational. As contemporary thinkers turn toward new ways of reading antiquity, these selected studies will inspire other readings of ancient texts through new feminist methodologies and critical vantage points. When examining the philosophers and notable figures of antiquity alongside their overt patriarchal and masculinist agendas, readers are invited to rethink their current biases while also questioning how particular ideas and texts are received and read.
Introduction
Jessica Elbert Decker and Danielle A. Layne

Part I: Myth, Divination, and the Pre-Platonic

1. Was Homer's Circe a Witch?
Andrew Gregory

2. The Oracle as Intermediary
Sasha Biro

3. The Roots of Life and Death in the Homeric Hymns and Presocratic Philosophy
Jessica Elbert Decker

4. The Intelligibility of Difference: Anaxagoras' and Lugones' Ontologies of Separation
Holly Moore

Part II: Platonic Transformations

5. As Much Mixture as Will Suffice: Socrates' Embodied Intermediacy in Plato's Phaedo and Symposium
Hilary Yancey and Anne-Marie Schultz

6. Overturning Soul-Body Dualism in Plato's Timaeus
Monica Vilhauer

7. The Argument of Socrates' Action in Republic V
Mary Townsend

Part III: Late Antique Destabilizations

8. Divine Mothers: Plotinus' Erotic Productive Causes
Danielle A. Layne

9. Beyond Maleness and Femaleness? The Case of the Virgin Goddesses in Proclus' Metaphysics
Jana Schultz

10. Hekate and the Liminality of Souls
William Koch

11. Christian Platonists in Support of Gender Equality: Bardaisan, Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Eriugena
Ilaria L. E. Ramelli

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie antique
• Greece
• History
• Ancient
• General
• Classical
• Feminism
• History of Europe
• Social sciences
• Literary criticism
• Ancient history
• Ancient Greece
• General officer
• Philosophy
• Philosophie et théologie
• LGBTQ+
• Feminist
• Surveys
• LGBTQ+ Studies

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438488813
• Langue: English

Extrait

Otherwise Than the Binary
SUNY series in Ancient Greek Philosophy

Anthony Preus, editor
Otherwise Than the Binary
New Feminist Readings in Ancient Philosophy and Culture
Edited by
Jessica Elbert Decker, Danielle A. Layne, and Monica Vilhauer
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2022 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Decker, Jessica Elbert, editor. | Layne, Danielle A., editor. | Vilhauer, Monica, editor.
Title: Otherwise than the binary : new feminist readings in ancient philosophy and culture / [editors] Jessica Elbert Decker, Danielle A. Layne, Monica Vilhauer.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, [2022] | Series: SUNY series in ancient Greek philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022003295 (print) | LCCN 2022003296 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438488790 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438488813 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Ancient | Greece—Civilization—To 146 B.C. | Gender nonconformity. | Feminist criticism.
Classification: LCC B111 .O84 2022 (print) | LCC B111 (ebook) | DDC 180—dc23/eng/20220218
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003295
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003296
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Contents
I NTRODUCTION
Jessica Elbert Decker and Danielle A. Layne
Part One: Myth, Divination, and the Pre-Platonic
C HAPTER O NE Was Homer’s Circe a Witch?
Andrew Gregory
C HAPTER T WO The Oracle as Intermediary
Sasha Biro
C HAPTER T HREE The Roots of Life and Death in the Homeric Hymns and Presocratic Philosophy
Jessica Elbert Decker
C HAPTER F OUR The Intelligibility of Difference: Anaxagoras’ and Lugones’ Ontologies of Separation
Holly Moore
Part Two: Platonic Transformations
C HAPTER F IVE As Much Mixture as Will Suffice: Socrates’ Embodied Intermediacy in Plato’s Phaedo and Symposium
Hilary Yancey and Anne-Marie Schultz
C HAPTER S IX Overturning Soul-Body Dualism in Plato’s Timaeus
Monica Vilhauer
C HAPTER S EVEN The Argument of Socrates’ Action in Republic V
Mary Townsend
Part Three: Late Antique Destabilizations
C HAPTER E IGHT Divine Mothers: Plotinus’ Erotic Productive Causes
Danielle A. Layne
C HAPTER N INE Beyond Maleness and Femaleness? The Case of the Virgin Goddesses in Proclus’ Metaphysics
Jana Schultz
C HAPTER T EN Hekate and the Liminality of Souls
William Koch
C HAPTER E LEVEN Christian Platonists in Support of Gender Equality: Bardaisan, Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Eriugena
Ilaria L. E. Ramelli
C ONTRIBUTORS
I NDEX
Introduction
J ESSICA E LBERT D ECKER AND D ANIELLE A. L AYNE
A now common critique of the Western philosophical tradition is that it harbors an inherent sexism wherein “universal reason” is far from neutral but is, rather, positively masculine, setting itself against the feminine domain of irrationality, madness, magic, and mystery. Theorists like Genevieve Lloyd or feminists like Luce Irigaray have argued that Greek modes of thought, particularly Pythagorean, Platonic, and Aristotelian, insofar as they appear to privilege identity over difference, logos over pathos , the intelligible over the bodily, form over matter, and so on, all harbor a gendered hierarchy that reinforces sexist and racist oppression not only in antiquity but also in the present age. As our title suggests, this volume hopes, to think otherwise than this binary and to examine whether the Greek worldview neatly falls within this exclusionary form of thinking. Overall, we will ask if there are ways of thinking antiquity differently, namely, as possibly expounding and even celebrating philosophies of difference, and we will see if we may discover rare moments when authors of antiquity valorize and uphold the necessity of all that has been coded as feminine, foreign, and/or irrational. This volume does not aim to address every figure or period of antiquity; rather, it proceeds thematically through selected texts that invite interpretation that is otherwise than the binary. As contemporary thinkers are turning toward new ways of reading antiquity, we hope that these selected studies will inspire other readings of ancient texts through this critical lens. When examining the philosophers and notable figures of antiquity alongside their overt patriarchal and masculinist agendas, we will attempt to rethink our current methodologies while also questioning how we receive and read these texts.
Is it possible to interrogate particular authors, texts, and social practices of antiquity for ideas, theories, and/or images that are complementary to feminist and intersectional concerns? While not a work of apologetics that dismisses or neglects exclusionary practices and beliefs of classical authors so as to safeguard the value of the “perennial tradition,” the following does hope to respond to the question in the affirmative, analyzing the works of problematic thinkers and texts anew, seeing if we can engage their philosophy and practices in ways that might expose their own deep-seated tensions and contradictions. In other words, insofar as feminists wish to argue that patriarchal logic is inherently problematic, we will expose how there are moments, strains of thinking, in which masculinist authors fail to be fully consistent in their misogyny—fail, despite their agendas, to support their own attempts to delegitimize the feminine/Other—showing how the systems and ideas of antiquity may contain internal struggles and possible whispers of revolution that dismantle and subvert patriarchal thinking.
Of course, this anthology of essays in which we reinterpret select authors from antiquity through a feminist perspective would not be possible without the important works of the scholars before us. One of the most influential works to turn a feminist critical lens on Ancient Greek culture and thought is Nicole Loraux’s groundbreaking Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes (1984). In this text, Loraux examines the Athenian idea of autochthony (nativeness) in the Ancient Greek imagination and analyzes the figure of Pandora as the “first woman” created by Hephaestus at Zeus’s command. Loraux approaches these myths as fantasies, arguing that myth—often disregarded in much of the classical tradition of scholarship that preceded her—plays a significant political role in the context of the polis . 1 Loraux is working in a genre of scholarship influenced by the ideas of Lévi-Strauss, and often refers to the texts of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne, thinkers working in the tradition of structuralist anthropology that attempted to understand Ancient Greek mythical narratives within their cultural, civic, and religious contexts. Children of Athena is a rich and complex work, and cannot be exhaustively summarized here, so we will focus on crucial aspects of Loraux’s treatment of autochthony and the myth of Pandora as emblematic analyses that demonstrate her method and critical feminist orientation toward the texts, especially as she reads them in ways that would support our “otherwise than the binary” reorientation toward classical antiquity.
Loraux argues that the Athenian tradition of autochthony “dispossesses the women of Athens of their reproductive function. This dispossession, of course, belongs to the realm of the imaginary, and it looks like the expression of a dream or a denial of reality rather than a definite program or an Athenian theory of reproduction.” 2 Athenians adopted this origin myth, where they are born directly from the soil, out of the earth, and they do not originate in the womb of a woman. This denial of the female reproductive body is further evident in the myth of Erichthonios, who is born from the earth after Hephaestus’ failed attempt to rape Athena; Hephaestus’ seed falls to the earth and from her Erichthonios is born. It is significant that Athena remains a virgin goddess, echoing the erasure of the sexually autonomous female reproductive body that the myth of autochthony properly accomplishes. Loraux reads these Ancient Greek myths and their effects in the civic life of the Athenian people, while remarking on the myth of Erichthonios as an expression of male desire.
The doctrine of autochthony is something like the satisfaction of a desire, rather than a misunderstanding of the laws of reproduction. The desire of a society of men to deny the reality of reproduction is vested in the story of Erichthonios, since masculine experience dictates that what really counts takes place among men. 3
Athenian autochthony has, of course, been discussed in traditional scholarship, but as Loraux points out, only insofar as it is historically significant. Loraux emphasizes the meaning of this doctrine with regard to sexual difference and the social and cultural markers of gender as they appear in the everyday lives of ancient Athenian people. 4
One of the most enduring legacies of Loraux’s work is her innovative reading of the myth of Pandora. Just as the myth of autochthony inevitably implicates Athena (as a kind of “virgin mother” of Erichthonios), the story of Pandora also crucially involves Athena, who presides over the creation of the alleged first woman. 5 Pandora is the mother of all women, indeed, mother of the “race of women,” but she, herself, is not born but created by father Zeus and the craftsman Hephaes