Is Feminist Philosophy Philosophy?

18. Philosophy Abandons Woman: Gender, Orality, and Some Literate Pre-Socratics

18 Philosophy Abandons Woman: Gender, Orality, and Some Literate Pre-Socratics Cornelia A. Tsakiridou It is not easy to speak in gender in English because in English things are not always spoken in their gender. There are no feminine, masculine, or neuter nouns as there are, for instance, in my native language, Greek. In Greek, being feminine, masculine, or neuter is part of what something is. Of course, one is not aware of this modality as one speaks or writes, except in a grammatical sense. But it is there, in the words, as a substratum and an orientation that become more visible when the language is used poetically-to say, for instance, that he philosophia einai gynaika (philosophy is a woman) or that she is physis poetike (a being of poetic or creative nature). There is also the poetry of proper names, which always makes me think ofmy late great-auntTheologia (Theology), a farmer in a Greek village, whose name never struck me as odd or inappropriate for who she was. Now, ifwe examine the meanings offeminine nouns like Ge (Gaia), glossa (tongue or embodied speech, as distinguished from the abstract, masculine logos), physis, polis, psyche, philosophia, poesis, thalassa (sea, a more contained body of water than masculine okeanos or ocean), we will notice relationships ofinclusion, internalization, growth, animation, creation-patterns that have natural equivalents or analogs in female physiology, sexuality, and in behaviors that derive from them. To give an example: feminine nouns kyesis, physis, poiesis are terms of generation and formation suggesting respectively the state and process of gestation, birth (or generation including the born being or creature itself), and 234 235 PHILOSOPHY ABANDONS WOMAN composition (both natural and artificial). Psyche (soul) is a related term ofanimation, suggesting life itselfand its observable signs, such as breath or movement. A remarkable fourth-century example of analogy between maternity and letter writing is noted byJesper Svenbro in his original study of reading and writing in ancient Greece. It is a riddle from a comedy by Antiphanes entitled Sappho that beginswith this line: "There is a feminine being (esti physis theleia) who, within the folds of her dress, keeps her babies who, although without voices, emit a cry that resounds across the waves ofthe sea...." It is given the following explanation: ''The feminine being is a letter (theleia men nyn esti physis epistole); the babies that she carrieswith her everywhere are the letters [ofthe alphabet] (grammata). "1 Antiphanes's comic intentions aside, the fragment is remarkable for the correspondence between grammatical pattern and content: Physis and epistole are feminine; vre.fi (babies) and grammata (alphabetical letters) are neuter. The analogyworks grammatically, visually, and performatively. The letter gathers and keeps its words together the way a mother gathers and keeps her children close to her body. When the letter is being read, living creatures (the spoken words) emerge from the sheet like children emerge from their mother's body and dress. A similar relationship between speech and world informs the archaic figure known as ring composition. It involves the repetition at the beginning and end ofa passage of a phrase or word which then works as a frame or enclosure for the unit. In many instances, ring composition has the effect of mimicking anticipation and closure in human events, especiallywhere the poet, as in Homer, portraysvivid characters and their actions. But it also works with the description ofinanimate objects, as for example in Hesiod's account ofthe shield ofHeracles2 where, as William G. Thalmann has observed, the verbal description, by its form, embodies the composition of the picture that we are to imagine.3 Hesiod's verse: And on the shield was a harbour with a safe haven from the irresistible sea, made of refined tin wrought in a circle, and it seemed to heave with waves. And round the rim Ocean was flowing, with a full stream as it seemed, and enclosed all the cunning work of the shield. (207-9,313-14) These examples suggest an iconographic, iconological4 language that is semantically and syntactically oriented toward sexual difference. 236 CORNELIA A. TSAKIRIDOU The ontological possibilities that it creates for its speakers with graphic transparency outline a world that is manlike, womanlike, and childlike (with the implication of sexual immaturity or promise). To the extent that, to borrow a metaphor from Jacques Derrida, language is a place where one lives butwhere also one is inhabited; to speak Greek is...