Re: Chora/Khora

Stuart,
I cannot give an adequate (or an alethetic) relation of Butler's work with
chora and Heidegger's.
Regarding Derrida's Khora in On the Name, I actually was exposed to both
his text and hers at almost the same time. Without going back and reading
again, my memory tells me that Butler's reading (which is a reading of
Irigaray's reading) is less interested in khora in terms of deferal and more
interested in chora as demonstrative of the production of matter.
I am not sure if that clairfies anything, or even if it really
distinguishes the readings. I will try to provide more of a reply soon..
One thing, Butler ends her essay by pointing towards Aristotle's notion of
place in distinction from Platonic chora as a conception of place. She speaks
of relating this to Foucault in terms of the forming of bodies within fields
of power.
Its from this sort of direction that I hear both Butler and Foucault as
engaging bodies (in the plural) such that that which we might call a soul is a
fold in the material fields of force -- something produces rather than
repressed. In this sense, the duality of mind/body is not transcended, but
rather undestood in a radically material fashion.
Chad

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