- Title
- Plato, feminist philosophy, and the representation of culture: Butler, Irigaray, and the embodied subjectivity of ancient women
- Creator
- Keegan, Peter
- Relation
- Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies: JIGS Vol. 7, Issue 1-2, p. 90-105
- Relation
- http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/hss/research/publications/jigs
- Publisher
- University of Newcastle, Faculty of Education and Arts
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2003
- Description
- This paper seeks first to interrogate the ways in which two contemporary feminist thinkers (Judith Butler and Luce Irigaray) have appropriated and reformulated a fundamental principle of pre-modern thinking about human action and conduct (Plato’s philosophy of Forms). I will argue that any view on issues of essentialist and constructivist social history which Butler and Irigaray inadvertently raise must first accommodate a thoroughgoing presentation of all available evidence. The second half of this paper explores the ways in which specific representations of female identity—the gravestone of two citizens of the late-republican city of Rome (CIL 6/3.18524) and the graffito of a Roman “poetess” in the epigraphic environment of early-imperial Pompeii (CIL 4.5296)—engender (in many senses) exactly the kinds of tensions and ambiguities which Butler and Irigaray bring to bear on Plato’s philosophical strategies. What I hope to illustrate is two-fold: a practical method of, and the critical need for, integrating post-modern theoretical standpoints on sex/gender issues with the representational discourses of the ancient world.
- Subject
- Plato; feminist philosophy; culture; Judith Butler; Luce Irigaray; women; ancient
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1046636
- Identifier
- uon:14662
- Identifier
- ISSN:1325-1848
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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