The Feminine Symptom: Aleatory Matter in the Aristotelian Cosmos

Acknowledgments

ac k now l e d g m e n t s This project has had such a long gestation that it is impossible to acknowledge adequately all those who have contributed one way or another to its genesis. At the very least, I should say that I am profoundly grateful to a bevy of brilliant and generous interlocutors, mentors, readers, and friends for their support and feedback, as well as for the invaluable institutional backing, without which this work could not have been accomplished. Thank you to Richard Bernstein, Judith Butler, and Dmitri Nikulin for their immensely helpful critiques when this project was in its early stages. In particular, Judith Butler and Kaja Silverman’s seminars in the Rhetoric Department at UC Berkeley were formative for my thinking in this book. I am grateful to the UNC Charlotte Department of Philosophy, in particular Michael Kelly, Marvin Croy, and Nancy Gutierrez for granting me space and time for research and writing, including sponsoring my stay at the University of Dundee. A semester spent at the University of Dundee as a Humanities Research Fellow enabled great progress on the manuscript, and I thank the School of Humanities and the Philosophy faculty, especially Rachel Jones, for providing a rich and productive intellectual environment. At New York University I owe Jacques Lezra, chair of the Comparative Literature Department, Joy Connolly, Dean of Humanities, and the Humanities Initiative many thanks for both moral and financial support throughout the publication process, and Susan Protheroe for all kinds of material assistance. I am also deeply grateful for the unstinting support and mentorship over the years of Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell, Kaja Silverman, and Walter Brogan. Earlier versions of parts of this book were delivered as papers at meetings of the Ancient Philosophy Society, the Society for Phenomenology Acknowledgments x and Existential Philosophy, the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, philoSOPHIA: A Feminist Society, the Irigaray Circle, the Society for Women in Philosophy, the American Philosophical Association, and the Society for Literature, Science, and Arts; I am grateful to these organizations for hosting me, and to the many invaluable conversations that ensued in the fertile contexts they offered. I am especially thankful to the members of the Ancient Philosophy Society, a remarkable scholarly community whose erudition, feedback, support, and companionship have contributed to this book in immeasurable ways. In particular I would like to thank Sara Brill, Walter Brogan, Ryan Drake, Jill Gordon , Josh Hayes, Sean Kirkland, Aryeh Kosman, David Farrell Krell, Christopher Long, Jessica Mayock, Holly Moore, Michael Naas, Eric Sanday, Michael Shaw, and Adriel Trott, without whose insights this work would be a mere shadow of itself. I have been exceptionally lucky that these chapters have at various stages found fine and careful readers in Sara Brill, Rachel Jones, Homay King, Katherine Stephenson, David Kazanjian, and members of the UNC Charlotte Philosophy faculty reading group, all of whom gave unsparingly of their time and provided enormously enriching feedback for which I am hugely grateful. I particularly thank Mike Shaw, Kate Thomas, Rebecca Hill, and two anonymous readers for their unprecedented generosity in reading and commenting on the entire manuscript. I only hope I have done justice to their suggestions as the book evolved. Any errors or failures of analysis remain my own, of course. I thank my editors Helen Tartar and Tom Lay at Fordham University Press, Laura Helper-Ferris for vital editorial guidance, Tim Roberts at the Modern Language Initiative for shepherding the book into print, Michael Koch for painstaking copyedits, Andrew Joron for a fine index, Jonathan Eburne for an important file, Sammy Cucher and Anthony Aziz for the stunning cover image, and Elizabeth Benninger for invaluable research assistance. In addition to these more formal kinds of engagement, this book has been vastly strengthened by the wisdom, conversation, friendship, kinship, support, love, comradeship, and community of many people in many contexts, more than I could ever hope to mention, including Dina Al-Kassim, Paula Austin, Anthony Aziz, Ellen Babcock, Sara Beardsworth, Cristina Beltrán, Pearl Brilmeyer, Shay Brawn, Eric Butler, Naveen Chandra, Zahid Chaudhary, Ed Cohen, Simon Critchley , Sammy Cucher, Chris Cuomo, Alison Dell, Josh Dubler, Ronald Duculan, Lisa Duggan, Melissa Ehn, David Eng, Tony Freitas, Acknowledgments xi Raelyn Gallina, Nish Gera, Gina Glennon, Gayatri Gopinath, Amy Greenstadt, Elizabeth Grosz, Gillian Harkins, Brooke Holmes, Donna Hunter, Robin James, Leigh Johnson, Nina Katchadourian, Homay King, Kent Klaudt, David Landau, Kyoo Lee, Carla Loomis...