En 1978, dans le quartier de Stratia (Corfou), au Sud-Ouest de Palaiopoli, où se trouvait l'agora de la ville antique, on a fouillé un dépôt de sanctuaire domestique, dédié à une divinité féminine (Héra?) : au-dessus des ruines d'une habitation, on a recueilli 40 objets de caractère cultuel et rituel (figurines, vases, objets métalliques) datant du milieu du vr s. au 1er quart du ve s. av. J.-C. Ils étaient brisés et mêlés à des charbons, des coquillages et des ossements (...) d'oiseaux à moitié calcinés, restes évidents de sacrifices ou de repas rituels. L'offrande la plus remarquable du dépôt est un vase à parfum tripode en bronze, daté du 3e quart du vr s. av. J.-C, et qui, comme on peut le conclure de l'étude de la forme et du décor, doit provenir d'un atelier corinthien de Grande-Grèce. (shrink)

Plato's chora as developed in the Timaeus is a creative matrix in which things arise and stand out in response to the lure of the Good. Chora is paired with the Good, its polar opposite; both are "beyond being" and the metaphors hitherto thought to disclose the transcendent. They underlie Plato's distinction of a procreative gap between being and becoming. The chiasmus between the Good and chora makes possible their mutual participation in one another. This gap makes (...) possible both phenomenological and cosmological interpretations of Plato. Metaphor is restricted to beings as they appear in this gap through the crossing of metaphor's terms, terms that dwell with, rather than subulate, one another. Hermeneutically, through its "is" we can see something being engendered or determined by that crossing. Bigger's larger goal is to align the primacy of the Good in Plato and Christian Neoplatonism with the creator God of Genesis and the God of love in the New Testament. (shrink)

Chora L Works documents the unprecedented collaboration, initiated in 1985, between philosopher Jacques Derrida and architect Peter Eisenman on a project for the Parc de la Villette in Paris. Woven into the volume are discussion transcripts, candid correspondence, and essays, as well as sketches, presentation drawings, and models. Derrida and Eisenman's design process was guided by Plato's chora text from the Timeaus; their unique reciprocal relationship was an interchange - and transformation - of voices.

The chora is one of the most perplexing as well as neglected concepts in Whitehead's metaphysics. Explicitly drawing on Plato's Receptacle, Whitehead reinterprets the chora as the place, in between physics and metaphysics, where connections among actual entities happen. However, the relation between Whitehead's and Plato's choral remains widely unexplored. This article aims to correct this oversight By comparing the two philosophers, I intend to argue that, differences aside, the two philosophers adopted the chora to answer the (...) common question as to how things can be identified in the flux of events. In this way, I hope not only to clarify the obscure role of the chora in Whitehead's metaphysics and its relation to Plato, but also to explore the complex process of identification. (shrink)

Indigenous Egyptian elites who held titles in the late Ptolemaic court hierarchy offer a counterpoint to the typical model of Hellenistic court society as a culturally and ethnically exclusive social space. Though underrepresented in standard accounts, several Egyptians held the honorific title of "kinsman" of the king ( syngenes ). Statues of these men wearing the mitra of the syngenes in the forecourts of temples, together with Greek and Egyptian epigraphic evidence, show that indigenous elites who circulated between Alexandria and (...) Upper Egypt contributed to the creation of a transcultural space that was critical for maintaining the power of the Ptolemaic state in the Egyptian chora during the troubled conditions of the second and first centuries B.C.E. (shrink)

Il arrive parfois que la danse rejoigne la philosophie, car l’une et l’autre sont des mouvements et des pensées du corps. Et elles ont en commun de ne se déployer que dans et par la limite. Vivre « aux confins », c’est atteindre les limites et ne jamais les dépasser. Et quiconque voudrait s’envoler s’écrasera d’une pesanteur qu’il aura eu le tort de refuser. Ce texte, mise en scène par les élèves du conservatoire de danse contemporaine de Tours (sous la (...) direction de Valerie de Mortillet, professeur de danse) figure ce que la pensée depuis si longtemps voulait montrer. On associera ainsi l’image à la réflexion, pour voir précisément ce qu’il en est du poids de notre humanité : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8NIvz24YBU. (shrink)

Comments on two recently published tripod bases. — Modifications to the slope of the Acropolis above the Theatre of Dionysos: stair-heads cut into the rock, choregic columns dating from the 4th or 3rd c. BC (and not the Roman period), Thrasyllos Monument and Chapel of the Virgin. — Lysicrates Monument: the tripod rested on the roof of the monument (and not on the finial which crowned it). — As an appendix: The Lysicrates Monument and France, the role of the Capuchin (...) fri- ars in the welcome to travellers and the protection of the monument, the interchange of correspon- dence between the French and Greek governments and the religious authorities according to the archive documents. (shrink)

This article explores the performative gestures and movements through which colonised women’s bodies negotiated deep tensions between Indian patriarchy and colonial dominance in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in India. The first part focuses on the contributions of the Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) to the development of dance in Bengal, and locates Tagore’s dance work within a wider discussion of gender and Indian nationalism. In the second part, Tagore’s interest in the staging of gender and his (...) decolonisation of the Indian stage are explored through his travel letters from South East Asia. In part three, by shifting attention away from the idea of celebrity authorship that informs much historical writing on Tagore (an internationally acclaimed male poet and novelist who authored several women-centred dance productions), this essay privileges a reading of the labour and dance writing of Tagore’s daughter-in-law Pratima Devi who conceived, supervised and worked on many of Tagore’s dance-drama productions in Bengal, subverting many norms imposed on bourgeois women by a patriarchal Indian nationalism. In doing so, this study calls for a closer understanding of the relationship between the labour of women’s bodies both on and off the colonised dance stage in 20th century Bengal. (shrink)

Institution caractéristique d'une Cappadoce peu urbanisée, les chorévêques (ou ' évêques des campagnes ') sont attestés pour l'essentiel aux IVe et Ve siècles. C'est leur place dans le gouvernement de l'Église nouvellement impériale que nous avons examinée pour montrer que, loin de témoigner d'une première évangélisation et prise en charge par l'Église de ces communautés rurales d'Asie Mineure, leur importance au IVe siècle, puis leur effacement au siècle suivant signalent en fait la mise sous tutelle de ces mêmes communautés et (...) de leur organisation ecclésiastique par la hiérarchie épiscopale, conformément au principe d'accommodement. Cette conclusion invalide l'idée, encore récemment énoncée, que les campagnes dans leur ensemble ont été christianisées tardivement, et postérieurement aux cités. (shrink)

Dans son livre d’anthropologie esthétique sur L’art chorégraphique occidental, une fabrique du féminin, inspiré de sa thèse soutenue en 2005 à l’Université de Toulouse 2, Virginie Valentin propose d’étudier le « nœud entre émotion esthétique et danse classique » (p. 11) qui donnerait aujourd’hui aux jeunes filles françaises l’envie de pratiquer le ballet. Croisant entretiens de danseuses professionnelles et amatrices sur leurs expériences de l’apprentissage du ballet, avec une analyse littéra...

Wenn unsere faktische Erfahrung auf etwas beruhen muss, das nicht selbst wieder Erfahrung ist, drängt sich die Frage auf, wie die Vermittlung beider Bereiche zustandekomme. Sowohl Platon als auch Kant haben diese Vermittlung thematisiert, jener im Timaios, dieser im Opus postumum. Platons Dialog ist durch zwei Götteranrufungen in zwei Teile geteilt, denen nach Inhalt und Funktion zwei Werke Kants zugeordnet werden können. Dem ersten Teil, der die Welt unter rein noetischen Voraussetzungen zeigt, entspricht Kants Werk Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft. In (...) der Einleitung zum zweiten Teil des Dialogs führt Platon die Chora und einen neuen Typ von Grund ein. Dem entspricht im Opus postumum die Einführung des Äthers, der es erlaubt, von der Metaphysik zur Physik überzugehen, wie es die Chora erlaubt, von der rein noetischen zum empirischen Welt überzugehen. ************ If our factual experience must be based on something that is not itself experience, the question arises as to how the mediation of both areas comes about. Both Plato and Kant addressed this mediation, the former in the Timaeus, the latter in the Opus postumum. Plato’s dialogue is divided into two parts by two invocations to the gods, to which two of Kant’s works can be assigned in terms of content and function. The first part, which shows the world un- der noetic conditions, corresponds to Kant’s work Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwis- senschaft (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science), and in the introduction to the second part of the dialog Plato introduces the chora and a new type of reason. In the Opus postumum, this corresponds to the introduction of the ether, which makes it possible to move from metaphysics to physics, just as the chora makes it possible to move from the purely noetic to the empirical world. (shrink)

Associé à travers son histoire à la cour de Constantinople, le monastère de Chora a été restauré et décoré par Pthéodore Metochites, un premier ministre d'Andronokos II Palaiologos, entre 1313 et 1321. Cet article présente un poème attribué à Manuel Philes qui fournit un témoignage sur la dédicace et le principal katholikon du monastère.

En este artículo planteo una crítica a la noción de chora manejada por Julia Kristeva. Para ello, me sirvo de su misma noción de “intertextualidad”, que sitúo en el contexto de su encuentro intelectual con Jacques Derrida y, específicamente, con sus nociones de “différance” y “deconstrucción”. Aceptando que la teoría kristeviana de la chora reproduce una versión binarista de la diferencia sexual al plantear lo simbólico y lo semiótico como espacios diferenciados, defiendo la tesis de que la “intertextualidad” (...) invita a una concepción de lo simbólico que pone en jaque la oposición binarista suscrita por Kristeva. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to reclaim Kristeva's concept of the semiotic chora by re-inscribing it as an intervention in the context of two important postmodern debates. The first debate relates to the philosophical problem of “the beginning before the Beginning.” The second concerns the necessity and possibility of mediation between incommensurable entities: the “demonic” and the social, desire and the Law, material production and representation. I contend: that the introduction of the chora in RPL is part (...) of Kristeva's effort to restore the legacy of a materialist economy of the beginning, as this is glimpsed in Plato's Timaeus from which Kristeva borrows her controversial term; and that the chora constitutes an attempt on Kristeva's part to explore a third space of ambiguous relationality in the context of which our transcendence to the “demonic” lies less “beyond us” than “in-between.”. (shrink)

The Platonic chora, as the third, intermediating term, has been left in a state of virtual dereliction in the West. Its ternary logic transmutes oppositional logics of binarity, including the oppositions of interior and exterior, psyche and cosmos, human and divine. In this article I analyse the mytho-philosophical trajectory of the chora from Plato’s Timaeus, and Diotimaic love found in Plato’s Symposium. I argue that both the disruptive force of Diotimaic love, and the subversive chora with its (...) ‘bastard reasoning’1 are indicative of Plato’s efforts to resolve an internalized conflict which mirrored a larger conflict found in his cultural epoch, a time in which abstracted self-consciousness was on the horizon and chthonic-participatory consciousness was receding. In membering the chora I find a fecund space-time, an enabling field, for human participatory becoming-with the cosmos. (shrink)

Este artículo, centrado en el territorio del río Choró, en Siará, busca identificar los valores colectivos de la cultura dominante y eurocéntrica que inciden en las políticas de ordenación urbana y que desprestigian las cosmovisiones de los pueblos originarios de esta región. La reflexión se inserta en el contexto histórico de disputas territoriales y de la opresión ejercida sobre las poblaciones Paiacu, Potiguara, Pitaguaris y Jenipapo Kanindé. El estudio emplea la investigación autoetnográfica, guiada por un inventario de materialidades, narrativas orales (...) y trabajos de campo. La investigación descubre la historia local a partir de un conjunto de documentos hallados en el Archivo Histórico Ultramarino, en Lisboa, referentes a los años 1760 y 1761. Estos documentos incluyen cartas escritas por indígenas de la entonces Vila de Mecejana (actual Messejana), además de trozos de encajes de bolillos y puntillas, tejidos por niñas de la "villa de indios". Tales actividades revelan la imposición de la lengua extranjera y la invención de oficios como forma de expropiación y de trabajo forzoso, inscribiendo la mano del colonizador. Al navegar por el curso de agua (el Choró), entendido como un "acontecimiento" y escenario de disputa, el trabajo busca retomar territorios, revivir insurgencias y revisitar heridas abiertas, proponiendo el despertar de la memoria incorporada y el resurgimiento de comunidades indígenas. (shrink)

In the Timaeus, Plato’s creation story, Plato describes an entity he refers to as the chora. The Greek word chora is translated as place, room, or space, but Plato’s descriptions of the chora are so notoriously enigmatic that there is disagreement about what, exactly, he intends to indicate by it. In this paper, I address an interpretation of the chora according to which the chora is a kind of cosmic mirror. I argue that this interpretation (...) results in an uncharitable reading of Plato’s explanation. Alternatively, I contend that Plato conceives of the chora as space, place, and matter all at once. The upshot of my view is that it attributes to Plato a more nuanced understanding of space and place and a more coherent explanatory account. (shrink)

The word parousia was used in Ptolemaic Egypt as a technical term for royal visits. In the present paper the word is studied in connection with visits of high-ranking officials. First, an identification of the officials is proposed. Then, the logistic preparations related to the visits and the burdens they constituted for the inhabitants of the Egyptian chora are treated. Finally, the possible extortions and abuses resulting from the journeys of the officials are discussed. I conclude that not only (...) the terminology and the practical organisation of the visits of the monarchs and important officials were similar, but that the underlying purposes of their appearances in the chora also derived from the same monarchic ideology. (shrink)

In this paper, I tried to analyze a couple of Kristeva's ideas and concepts. I tried to engage myself in the debate on whether Kristeva's semiotic politics could be seen as subversive enough to be feminist. I have claimed that some of her basic concepts can be read in a feminist manner, nonetheless Kristeva's oeuvre is packed with all sorts of ambiguities and ambivalences, which makes it hard to define her position towards feminism. At the end of this paper, I (...) also try to supplement Irigaray's conceptualization of the chora to the one of Kristeva, in order to stress that the latter's semiotic politics are feminist and subversive, but maybe a bit too 'maternal' instead of feminine. (shrink)

Erwin Sonderegger: Zur Funktion der Chora in Platons Timaios und des Äthers in Kants Übergangsschrift.

The present article re-examines the tomb monuments in the parekklesion and the outer narthex of the main church of the Chora monastery, which are generally thought to date from the early Palaiologan period. Based on the analysis of the iconography and style of the frescoes adorning the tombs, it is suggested that some of the burials should be re-dated at least a few decades later. The frescoes in the lunette of the Tomb of Michael Tornikes (Tomb D) appear to (...) have been executed shortly after 1350 and the decoration of Tombs C and E must date from around the same time. The portraits in Tombs F and G date from the 15th century. The epigraphic evidence and the images illustrate the continuing use of the Chora by its patrons, members of various branches of the Tornikes, Asanes, Raoul, and Dermokaites families, during the last century of the monastery. (shrink)

Maternity is a ghastly and frightening proposition in Sophocles’s Antigone. This paper probes this startling motif, which unravels the “unhappy girl, child” of Oedipus through the psychoanalytic framework of Julia Kristeva’s theories of the symbolic, the semiotic, and the chora. The significance of a Kristevan reading of Antigone is twofold: Kristeva’s theory of the relationship between maternity and melancholia solves the mystery of Antigone’s irreparable sadness and unflinching affiliation with the dead. Second, Kristeva’s notions of the dual modalities of (...) discourse, the symbolic and the semiotic, and the importance of the chora, focus on evaluating the ominous consequences of the subjugation and destruction of the maternal body in the tragedy. (shrink)

Résumé Des artistes ont changé leur rapport à l’art et ont collaboré à bouleverser le paysage culturel dans des domaines tels que la littérature, la musique, le cinéma ou l’art plastique. Comme en témoignent les œuvres de Yazid Kheloufi, Hosni Hertili, Hassan Massoudy et Alexia Traore, en s’attaquant aux interdits, leur liberté d’expression a laissé place à une force créatrice. Ils sont devenus maîtres de leur passé, de leur présent, de leur futur et même de leurs corps.

This article focuses on the late career of Marie Taglioni who, after having performed as a dancer for three decades, adapted her skills to the employment of teaching and choreographing ballets during the Second Empire. It highlights the role played by her parents in her initial training during a period that saw the feminization of professional ballet in Western Europe. Although the composition of ballets was an activity strongly censored for female dancers, Marie Taglioni managed to develop a professional network (...) that effectively promoted her to the rank of choreographer. Despite this success and after composing two ballets, Le Papillon (1860) and Zara (1862), Taglioni still struggled against gender norms that limited women’s role to the performance of others’ works, and excluded women from the status of salaried ballet master. (shrink)

Résumé Années 1990. Nus sur scène, une poignée de danseurs explore en de surprenantes contorsions les possibilités du corps. Virtuoses de l’étrange, ils présentent un type de récit inattendu où la nudité, loin d’incarner un quelconque idéal, semble le révoquer pour proposer un ordre sensible sans précédent. L’idée? Échapper au figuratif, à la narration, aux formes directement lisibles, car prévisibles, pour mieux promouvoir les formes iconoclastes maintenues en puissance dans le visible. Au delà des cadres de l’usuel et des clôtures (...) où nichent les images idéales et univoques de la corporéité, ces peaux exhibées font l’éloge du multiple, de l’instable et du mouvant. (shrink)