| Contents |
Introduction: the sublime freedom of the ancients: Beauvoir, Cixous, and Duras on gender, the erotic, and transcendence : Antiquity and the acte gratuit in Simone de Beauvoir -- Orpheus in the cave: Hélène Cixous beyond transcendence -- Marguerite Duras: writing and the feminine -- Conclusion. 1 The dark continent: Luce Irigaray, The Cave, and the history of Western metaphysics : Theoretical and historical preliminaries: Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida, Lacan -- Reflective surfaces: The Cave, the Chora, and representation -- Mind the gap: the representation of presentation in Republic 5 and 6 -- Irigaray, The Ethics of Sexual Difference, and the Symposium -- Concluding dialogues. 2 Revolution in platonic language: The Chora in Kristeva : Dreaming of the Chora: poetic language and the mother -- From speaking subject to semiotic Chora -- Plato's Chora: Kristeva, Democritus, and Derrida -- Chora, Khôra, [Chora] -- Conclusion. 3 Platonic Eros: Kristeva sends her love to Foucault and Lacan : This love train requires a transfer -- Manic masculine Eros and the maternal sublime -- The third man theme: Socrates, Alcibiades, and Agathon in Lacan -- THe erotics of reciprocity: true love in Plato and Faucault -- Conclusion. 4 Socrates, Freud, and Dionysus: the double life and death of Sarah Kofman : The Cave and Capital: Derrida, Plato, and Marx -- Dreamwork: Plato, Freud, and Irigaray -- Socrate(s) bifrons: philosophy, irony, and castration. Epilogue: Plato and truth. Bibliography -- Index. |
| Abstract |
Argues that the debates that emerged from the burgeoning of feminist intellectual life in postmodern France involved complex, structured, and reciprocal exchanges on the interpretation and position of Plato and other ancient texts in the western philosophical and literary tradition. Paul Allen Miller argues that the works of Anglo-American figures such as Toril Moi, Judith Butler, and Kaja Silverman, as well as movements such as queer theory, are rooted in feminist theoretical debates that began in the sixties in France and have continued right up to the present day. Miller demonstrates that French philosophy as represented by writers as diverse as Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Sarah Kofman, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Luce Irigaray cannot be understood without a full appreciation of these authors' reception of the Platonic texts and the debates that ensued. He reveals that in order to comprehend the intellectual substructure of much of later critical theory, it is crucial to examine the development of postmodern French feminist thought in relation to its dialogue with antiquity. In modern feminism and poststructuralism, the ancient world, and Plato in particular, truly function as our theoretical unconscious. |
