From: Examhell-AT-aol.com
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 12:44:40 EDT
Subject: 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