1995
First Published
4.16
Average Rating
135
Number of Pages
This pathbreaking work pursues two interwoven themes. Firstly, it engages in a deconstruction of Ancient philosopher's texts—mainly from Plato, but also from Homer and Parmenides—in order to free four Greek female figures from the patriarchal discourse which for centuries had imprisoned them in a particular role. Secondly, it attempts to construct a symbolic female order, reinterpreting these figures from a new perspective. Building on the theory of sexual difference, Cavarero shows that death is the central category on which the whole edifice of traditional philosophy is based. By contrast, the category of birth provides the thread with which new concepts of feminist criticism can be woven together to establish a fresh way of thinking.
Avg Rating
4.16
Number of Ratings
80
5 STARS
36%
4 STARS
46%
3 STARS
16%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
1%
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Author
Adriana Cavarero
Author · 10 books
Adriana Cavarero teaches philosophy of politics at the University of Verona, Italy, and is a visiting professor at New York University. Her field of research includes classical, modern and contemporary thought, with a special focus on the political significance of philosophy. Two main concerns shape her approach to the Western philosophical tradition. First, the 'thought of sexual difference', a theoretical perspective that enables the deconstruction of Western textuality from a feminist standpoint. Second, the thought of Hannah Arendt, reinterpreted in its most innovative categories: birth, uniqueness, action and narration. The result is an inquiry that foregrounds the individual and unique existence of the human being, as related to body and gender. Cavarero resists both the solitary abstraction of the philosophical Subject, and the volatile fragmentation of the postmodern subject, in the name of the living uniqueness of a self being generated through plural relationships with other human beings, and the acceptance of the constraints of individuality and the body.
