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    Chora L Works (PDFDrive)

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    Dav Stamaría

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Seth ea Sots) ssc, Our new starting-point in describing the universe must, however, be 4 fuller classification than we made before. We then distinguished two things: but now a third must be pointed out, For our earlier dis course the 1Wo Were sufficient: one postulated as model, intelligible und always unehangingly real; secon, a copy of this model, whieh 4 becomes and is visible, A thd we did not then distinguish, thinking that the two sould suffice: but now, it seems, the argument compels tis 10 allempt fo bring to light and describe a form difficult and ‘obscure, What nature must we, then, conceive i 1 possess spat part does it play? This, more than anything else: that Recepiale—asit were the mag ll Booming Tv, ous difficulty about fre andthe things that rank with fre. Is hard to say, with respect «9 any one of these, which we ough to call really \water rather than fire, or indeed which we should call by any given name rather than by all the names together or by each severally, so as to use language in a sound and trustworthy way, How, then, and in ‘what terms are we to speak ofthis mater, and what isthe previ difficulty that may be reasonably Inthe first place \when itis compacted, we see (as ine) becor and this same thing, wheat is dissolved and dispersed, wind and a 1 fre by being inflamed: and, by take wwe now call water. Th «becom air becom a reverse process, fie, when condensed and extinguished, rewraing ‘once more to the form of air, and air coming together again and con: ddensing as mist and cloud; and from these, as they are yet more lose- |y compacted, flowing water; and from water once more earth and stones; and thus, as it appears, they transmit in a eyele the process of| passing into one another. Since, then, in thig way no one of these 4 ‘ever makes its appearance as thelilhing, which of them can we steadfastly affirm to be ckis—w I it may be—and not something else, without bushing for ougselves? It cannot be dane; but by far the safest course is to speak of them in the following terms. ‘Whenever we observe a thing perpetually changing—fire, for exam- but as “what ‘ut always as ‘hor must we speak of anything ‘ple—in every case we should speak of fire, not as “thi is of such and such a quality” nor of water as “this.” ‘what is of such and such a quality” else as having some permanence. among all the things we indicate by his” or “tha.” imagining we are pointing out some definite thing. For they slip away and do not wait to be described as that" or “this” or by any phrase that exhibits them as ha nent being, We should not use these expressions of any of them, but that which is of a certain quality and has the same sort of quality as it perpetually recurs in the eycle"-—that isthe description we should use in the ease ofeach and all of them, In fact, we must give the name the expressions fing perma “IL 8? ody adles dpyt epi, 100 mavrés. Zorw wecévos rig mpdater Segpnpéry. rove per yap Bio efby Biethijeeba, viv 88 rpirov @Mo yevos rule Byluréor. ri ee’ yap. Bio iaawi vert rots Zuxpoobes NexBeiow, Be ee, ds rapabelyuaros tir Snare vorriv a det ard radré bv, hisiyya 88 wapadeiypazos Bebrepor, yévecw, Exov wai Sparév. spirov_ 88 Tore av ob ecdjucba, vopuioavres ra U0 eew txaviss: vor BE 4 Aéyos Foucer doaayedtew yadersv al dyvbpdv eldos emyeipetv Myors eugavtoat. riva oy Exov Bivayw’ kard piiow wird tmokyrréoy; roudvde pwaéhora, dons eloat yeréoeus dnoboxiy adrd, ofov rijeny. ipnras par oly rddnés, bet 8 vapylorepor «tne rept aiirod. yadendy 68 EMus re wal dibre Tpoaropniiinae ‘epi mepés wal av werd mupds Greynaton rotrou xdpur rouray yp cinety Bxarror, Srotav SrusqiBup xpt) Myew waNov 3 rop al Snotoy érulleadhor 3 wal dravea wal! xaoréy re, obras dere rut morG al PePaly xpjiraabas Abyny, x@endv. mas ob 5} ror" aro wal ai rd mepi_abray. exdrass BuawopyBévres dv Ayoysen; mpdiroy pa 8.5} vor Bup dvoudraper, miynineroy, ts Boxotuer, Mbovs Kal ye ys pevow épcier, Tyxdueroy 52 kai Suaxperdycvor ad rairév roiro. metua nai apa, Evyravicvra 52 pa mip, dudzadw 52 mop ovyxpiiey ai xara~ oPcoBiy eis iBéay re dmedv aiilis adpos, wat wad ddpa Eodvra wai munvotjuevoy véfos wai Sui, & 52 rotrww ert paMov EyirRoypévwr Béov Burp, & Garos Be viv al \Bous adic, Dow re obrw Siabévra eis EMyda, ds ai , riv yereaw. orw 5} rovruw oBérore Fav abrov éxdoray davratoudvor, rolor adrav tis By drody ro0r0 wai ode EMo naylws Sucxupe~ Uspevos. ote aigyuveirat rs éaurév; ob Zorw, GAN dodadteraroy paxpp wep rotrav Bedvous be Ryewr eb 8 xabopiper Dore Dy yyrs- bevov. ds nip, ps} rofro dNNA 78 rowobrov éxorore rpocayepeietr mip, pBiaibup ror aNd 78 rowieey del, pi do BME pdiv dis vw" Exov BI » Soa Beuxnbvres ro pian 7@ 1ébe mpooxpdiperoe Byoiy aiyosueld 7 dele rip ix Sropvor why 700 16e Kal oro [eal mv 7G5e)t wai nacay doy wba os Sra aira tBeioura dos. ddA tara yey Eaora 10) yew, 78 58 rowrov bet nepubepojetvar* Sposor dederrow népt wal Eondvrov ofr wadeiv" wal 83) ai mip 73 bid mavrds rowirov, kai day Saovmep ween JF MONTH OF —____ COMMUNITY SceuRITY SYSTEM "pate. Time SIGN = 1 ‘i FLOOR Time - ou ) SEP 17 1985, oe Be Ser 171985 | 7 Tae SEP 17 1985| 7 - Vi C_| PSG ! l sep 171985 | 9. C7 Le SEP 17 1985 | 10-22 lo ~ SEP 171985 | 'p-21 lo SEP 171985 |/y37 w pee | SEP 171986 |p 2% yt {2 SEP 171985 | y<\ rH WS sep 171985 |p 3 ay SEP 17 1985 | 10° ee i ‘TRANSCRIPT ONE NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 17, 1985 JACQUES DERRIDA, PETER EISENMAN, JEFFREY KIPNIS, THOMAS LEESER, RENATO RIZZI PE Thank you for coming, Jacques. Before we begin to discuss our project, | would lke you to meat a few people whom | anticipate participate in our work together. First, allow me to Introduce my colleague Renato Rizzi. Renato shares an interest in the issues, ‘concem me and in my design methods, and he and | have collaborated on several projects. Second, please allow me to intro: juoe Thamas Leeser, an associate and principal cree Thomas and | work together on a day-to-day basis and he is you would ike to propose; alternatively, | could give you a brief introduction to my recent thinking about architecture, in particular that spect which | see as deriving from certain philosophic attitudes expressed in ycfork. Another possibility is for you to set out your nilosophic expectations, for me to sel out my architectural expectations, and then for us both ta try to find a way to synthesize these, ‘What seems important to me is that we search for a liaison, il be exciting for bath of us — a challenge whose physical and iellectual results will reflect the expgyence. JK It seems vel tant that you strive to dissolve your independent identities as ohilosopher and architect. JD Ye ¢, if thal is possible, PE When I spoke to Bernard Tschumi he told me that you may already have some thoughts on the projec ifm very excited fo hear these, JD Only very preliminary ones. Pethaps it would be useful i you tell me a litle about your work and your thoughts on the project. PE This sitvation is very strange for me, because Bernard Tochumis La Villette project is, | believe, related to an earlier project of mine. The grid in particular is reminiscent of a scheme that | iid seme years ago for Cannaregio in Venice; many of my colleagues have also made this association. Bemard's invitation to work with you on a small project for La Villette therefore creates an opportunity for & misreading of a misreading —a displacement of a ain irony. More important, hawever, is the opportunity to work directly with you. | have always attempted to get involved in interdisci- plinary situations — for example, I've collaborated with the Americ r Wiliam Gass. Your work has a special importance for me, however, as | have long been critical ftecture’s traditional ir rent with the nation of erigin, Architects always relate what they are doing to the human figure; cla rchitecture really means anthropacentric architecture, and for some four hundred years since the Renaissance,” the idea of alW@Minary scale — the human body — has dominated architectural thought. Even with the advent of Modern architecture, anthropemorphism stil governed architectural form — take, for example, Le Corbusier's famous hierarchy, and so on. For me, this is na longer tenable, Aesthetics repli what you might call textual possibilties, and has thus constrained the history of architecture. To take another example, tradisWM@Ny in architecture presence is solid and absence void, whereas in textual terms — that is, in a system of presences and absences — a void is as much a presenge as a solid. Solid and void, presence and absence, positive and negative — these are all erroneously taken to be synonymous, For me, this system of presences represses what | believe you call difference, which requires the simultaneous operation of both presence and absence. If this is the case, then architecture has been ane of the arenas in which difference is most repressed. This, to my mind, accounts for its status in the Greco-Chvistian hegemony. Finally, through your work directly, and ingirectly through such writers as Susan Handelman and Mark 7 ‘TRANSCRIPT ONE Taylor, | have recently begun to consider Hebraic thought and its implications for architecture. There were no graven images in the temple, and, as | understand it, the Hebrew language contains no present tense of the verb “to be" — only "was" and “will be.” Thus Hebraic thought deals more with absence than presence. And if my questioning ofthe issues in architecture is to come down to a cri lique of the operation of presence in architecture, then it might be interesting to try to construct a relationship between Hebraic and architectural tnought. | feel that we are linked by all of this and other issues as well What | am searching for is a way to turn decon- struction from a mode of analysis into one of synthesis. | ask myself, “How does one turn Jacques Derrida into a synthesizer? How does one make hirn make?” This is one of the challenges and possibilities of our work together. JK Jacques’ work, which has so pow crlully exposed the uncritical operation of a metaphysic of presence :— pursuit of truth in general, confronts archi tecture, which traditionally is concerned with Vitruvian veritas. It scoff “rost self-evident that the confrontation with the bult envi- ronment is a confront 4 say, Jacques, that bejgms‘ne selt-evident, one may sus pect a secret lurking. My own interest lies in asking why architecture is go resistant to Gecenterirgll in is theory and in its prac- tice. | should also add, as | sit here listening, that | am reminded of the Eupatinos, in which Valéry’s Socrates relates the moment in his youth when he decides between architecture and philosophy, He chooses philosophy, if | remember correctly, because he is Unable to penetrate the overwhelming presence of an undefined object to find its one truth, JD In fact the only idea | brought today was an interest in the role Socrates has in the sige ofthe dialogue of Plato's Timaeus. PE There are few architectural projects that tion with presence. Yet | remember once hear can be called “critical” in the philosophic sense ef the term. Tschumi's is one of those few, and must be applauded as such, Our gar~ exciting. JD | am excited and anxious. This is a very difficult sill for me, as | am operating in two foreign elements: architecture land the English language. When Berard Tschumi frst proposed this project to me, | was. | 4 but surprised, as | have no com- petence whatsoever in architecture. Nevertheless, | think | understand in a discursive, philodl_ fashion what you are saying. When | read your texts and examined Fin D'ou T Hou 8,1 | recognized many things: your oriique of origin, anthropomorphism and aesthe' den must also be a critical project, and we must see it as | 2g its place in La Villele; we have a larger obligation, which is ices contstentwiha general deconstucton of architecture ise, Your work seems to propose anant-architecture, or ather an anar Chitecture, Dut of cours hs fs nt eo simple, a what | dof anlachitectural inthe traonal sense of ant” Yet| have always had he feling of being an architec. na way, when | am wing; | havea vague feeling tha he form of whatever | am wing hasan arch tecture mension of the ype you were desing, Anvarcitecture, but with an architectural design — not a relerence to archtec- Srso or aren tt sty sneting ht sol "blr pan cos BAN Palecet ache tecture seers to have noting todo vith absence. one lf Glegger's txts, he sey a temple isa place where God is pre- sent, but that imps thatthe temple i an empty place ready 1 receive God. tis onl { paradox of lgocentism. All other arts have a fs of representation, but architecture Seems nt to depend on i. So, becauS@M is unique relationship to representation arontectue le more “present” than ary othr at. bute the same time, being the most "presenti algo the strongest rofrence to the opposteo! presence, namely absence This odd lationship io repesentaton seems to sugges thalin architecture we find some thi that conics the metaphysis of epresenaion and thus everything Inked to representation including the subject of epre sentation. Thats why architects more logocentc and at the same ime less ogocenric than the other ats. PE The quoston| ask is whether or not the condition AAich you have a a fundamental condition of architecture or an artifact of its historic devel- ‘opment, Until the fifteenth century, architecture dealt j with presence. The form, the figures, the text and the discourse collab- crated in the Gothic cathedral the cathedral was abcfftaituals; the rituals about the cathedral. n the fiteenth century, Albert, in his church for 8. Andrea in Mantua, overlaid the secular form of the triumphal arch with the sacred form of the classical temple front ina gesture designed to strengthen the image of the power of God with an external reference to power, to the arch of Titus in Rome. In Albert's use of representation, | believe, we find the beginnings ot a spit between presence and meaning, Since that time, archi tecture has developed as a representational art; that is, ithas invoked external sources to achieve its meaning. JK The Modernists Claimed the opposite — an autonomous, non-representative architecture — though today, we see their reductionist aesthetic, their 8 TRANSCRIPT ONE sionalism and their social project as continuations of a representational architecture, PE The architecture that Heidegger speaks aos one of presence, oF at the very leas, of presence as dominant over absence. The architecture | am pursuing is one in which pres- ‘sand absence operate equally. JD Well, you can strategically insist on absence as a disruption of the system of presence, but at fin point you have to leave the theme of absence. PE In the work we have been doing, we distinguish between the presence of vpsence, and the absence of presence. Its through this distinction that we attempt to activate absence and to operate simultane- ih presence and absence in a ofitique of the anthropocentric tradition, which represses absence. To put it another way, tra- ni, architecture centers, and its textuality speaks of center or presence. What we are trying to dois to create architectural texts, hile centering, at the same time speak of an other gaecentering. JD My difficulties have two sources. The first has to do with foreignness to architecture, The second, and more ifl—l&ng, is that | cannot understand how, with the uncompromising axioms discussed, you pO in the city toclMnout some compromise with the client and so on. Such forces requite, melereeeemtpiok ‘xh tildes pga eared Mee cas cocci cual istvecuaneatae ais Were ese tare Dera fossa ean get sericea nano re teens soe ie sera peste Wa we dtd be lobar or egaher wy fo rls heving Tove constarene eee ot wa ere ek seal vk es eases erica) inpisag . seiaid (ail dc guna mia rele ba Bear ees ciicara eres fads aaa tesyina uence Und alee cava Ue ice Faas cut wun guanine asiurem ernie wiccaed Neseat sl tm te demands the real “eo you nav eerstand now uneble am vied. your wet My raining, i ee ee cee eee ae Se ene ore ear tener ae eee ese ee te ay si tut conearty er asi enabiy ned dota arctiecur | anrsesed mn Whats oxi ie eto ince i that you are going to provide the crutch for me to overcome certain resistant values that | constantly face. On the other hand, | could provide a corresponding orutch, in that ! am familar with operating in the realm of the sensible. JD So, | will stop apologizing lor not being an architect. .. . PE And I will stop apologizing for not bsing an architect. JD So, let me go very quickly to the single idea | have. When Tschuri asked me to participate in this nrojedfilM\c excited, but at the same time, | was totally, totally empty. | mean, [had no ideas at all was in a Cf writing a text in hdjgiit0 the philosopher Jean-Pierre Vernant, which had to do with Concha eugt wove year c0° fling avery engmat passage mn he Tae apassape wich as erazed generators Demiurge, who gives birth to our visible world, is looking at the para the forms which are etemal; ideas as eternal beings, ‘These forms have preceded him, they are already, and while looking al Wiliehe gives these forms a sensible inscription, they become: sensible. This isthe origin of our sensible world; iis a copy, a representation of these eternal beings. So, we have two kinds of being} the idos, which is eternal and unchanging, and the becoming world, the sensible. Two kinds of being, one the copy of the other. Now Plato says — and there is something very strange here —that there is something else, the third element, triton genos. This third kind, (oF genos, is neither the eternal eidos nor its sensible copy, but the place in which all those types ate inscribed — the chora, To dis cuss this, Plato has to use what generations of philosophers have called “metaphors,” though | do not think they are metaphors. These 9 TRANSCRIPT ONE are the mother, the matrix or the nurse. You can compare, he says, the paradigm with the father, the sensible world with the child or the infant, and chora, this place of inscription, with the mother or nurse. But these are only metaphors, because they are borrowed ‘rom the sensible world, So chora is not the mother, nor the nutse who nurtures infants. Chora is ireducible to everything that gives Plato's philosophy coherence. Its a kind of hybrid being; a kind of being that we can only think of in dreaming, Chora is not exactly the void, though it looks as if it were void, and i's not temporal in the sense of a sensible world. JK But neither can it be eternal in the sense of the eidos. JD II's not eternal either in the sense of the stable presence which is not altered by time. So itis something which cannot be assimilated by Plato himself, by what we call Platonic ontology, nor by the inheritance of Plato, Further, it has nothing to do with topos, though Plato sometimes uses the word t900s — a determined. place — instead of chara, Chora is the spacing which is the condition for everything to take place, for everything to be inscribed taphor of impression or printing is very strong and rec: cognizable in this text. Its the place where everything is received as all, rint. There have been a saterpretations of chora, typ: cally reducing chara or projecting into chora various systems, Kant’s for example. Chora res ‘e interpretations. What inter fests me is that since chora is irreducible to the two positions, the sensible and the inteligible, which Mave dominated the entire tradi tion of Wester thought, i s itecucibie to all the valuss to which we are accustomed — values of origin, anthropomorphismn and so fon. | insist on the fact of this non-anthropemarphism of chora. Why? Because chora looks as though it were giving something, “giv ing” place. In French we say donner lieu the plajjy "st receiving or for giving. Chora receives everything or gives place to everything, yet Plato insists that in fact it has to be a virgin place, and that it has lo be totally foreign, totaly exterior to anything that it receives. 2 itis absolutely blank, everything that is printed on itis a ally effaced, It remains foreign to the imprint it receives; so, in a sense, it does not receive anything — it does not receive whai_ll ‘pives nor does it give what it gives. Everything inscribed init erases itself immediately, while remaining init. tis thus an impossibW Surface — itis not <7 Jae, because it has no depth, PE ‘You have presented the outlines of a possible program, which, of course, would need elabordl_Now are we going to try physical- ly 10 embody this programm? JK That would be the height of anthropocentrism. PE That's right — to say that you can make chora, JK But you can make the absence of chora: arent you saying what itis by saying what it isnt? PE That's i! We can make the absence ‘ra. The presence of the absence of chora, JD We can go back to the text of chora itself later on. But this text interests me because itis at the same time inside the Western philosophical tradition and irreducible to it; itis something which disrupts this tad tion from within. As Iwas telling this to Tschumi while we were walking inthe labyrinth — he was showing me his place and discussing ‘what he wanted — | tried to imagine what the architecturally imme translation wauld be. My concern was to have something — a to this: why does Tschumi want it to be a garden? This is a place, an open place in wif! tors can walk, and something should happen to them as they cross the garden. My... .| won't say myidea ... my dream was (nat was happening to them would have ‘some essential relationship with the structure of chora, as if something was printed by reflection and instantaneously erased, There would be a surface sand or water, for instance. On this surface, some forms, representing the paradigm, could cast a shadow on the ‘sand, a mirror reflection on the water, or something similar Then the passage ofthe visitor could affect the forms in some way which nevertheless leaves no stable trage, PE I think we would have to try to make something which has a general application. We should avoid materials which so obvious fase themselves, ike sand or water — we should try stone. If we used stone or wood or concrete \we might be able to suggest the presence of the absen ‘ora without alluding to a sacred experience. The phenomenon you are sna st as much EEE eon cone gomral_uomsagea! aera belyeen te ative ane he pate Se set metaphor, bul net ede to hea, for exept, thal te chara a ya moter, a rss, arecept We sana Spek ot snaps bevaue ts scope goes Doyo rf. of he party of retaphorcl ae of mpi of 2 ee coracrcods te ein ro dow anogo, fe mths andi 2 Ee en ae ysl ne orto puto te eto afeadng, The consequence Wish we ri a are ponte, eo o oa we route every a of aly, of PO <2 Wo en cent Guile terete wo el sb ay ovr, ay Ayn Gee etn oss weld ratergy be fol Du vecae in caring beyend the party of ers Fconresal or prope) wou! 0 longer Blorg "0 i aaa eee at of meaning a he meaning of bina. (rN ee ee cca puinese. Ml derstand why ii wot te word chore eetered fom Hermes pean: amy sore bce an tea) Posnae are fone Gk rate ny 08 arom a ete Tang ana wandaing NE sttse he same experince, Hts Or eee ven ctl concern for awe ofan tor ct raring Pt ls fr a whole wong Be Lo, Se tp for ways o approaching. node are tan the ean of H5 "YODODOY” cee ee a cate’ lcaton” “oe regen, “oun what adn cals the Ages o> nema Txepal npn ene te raneabns rem cavgtin ntwor ta Praaton Ty reed actay @, ospoctne a aorcneeeayrni can aye be suspects. Ths anachronism ary nececsariy, not always, and not only a wesknesdll * which a vigilant and rigorous interpretation wou be able to escape tntirely. We shal try to show that no one escapes MM Ke Even Heidegger, who is noneiheless one of the only ones never to speak of “metaphor,” s8ems 10 us to yield to this teleological retrospection? against which, elsewner® he so rightly puts us on sur guard. And this gesture seems highly significant forthe whole of his questioning and Nis relationship to the *history-of-phi- Towophy.” What has just been said of rhetoric, of translation or of teleological anachronism, could give Hse 9 misunderstand. ing We must sispe!it without delay. We will never claim to propose the mot juste for chora, nor to name itself, over and above eine turns and detours of ehetori, nor finally to approach It, itse for what it will have been, ouside of ary Point of view, out 16 ca sate HORA side of any anachonisticfanachronous perspective. Tropology and anachronism ate inevitable. And all we would like to show w ipat i's the structure which makes them thus inevitable, makes of them something other than accidents, weaknesses oF pro- vjconal moments. itis this structural law which seems to me never to have been approached as such by the whole history of spretations of the Timaeus. It would be a matter of a structure and not of some essence of the chora, since the question se no longer has any meaning with regard to it. The chora, we shall say, is anachronistic/anachronous, it “is" the ny within being, or better: the anachrony of being. It anachronises being, The whole history of interpretations, we have i saic. We will Never exhaust the immense literature devoted to the Timaeus since Antiquity. It ig out of the question to deal with it herein its entirety, And above all to presuppose Jbgagpity or homogeneity of this whole, the very possibilty of totalizing it in some ordered apprehension. What we shall presupo| the other hand, and one could stil call it a “working hypothesis,” 12 presumption of order (grouping, uniWpmtalily organized by a telos) has an essential link with the structural anachronism of which we 5 moment ago. It would be the inevitable effect produced by something like the chora— which is not something, and which'Is net like nothing, not even like what it would be, itself. Rich, numerous, inexhaustible, the inter- pretations come, in short, to give form to the meaning of chora. They always consist in giving it form by determining i, it which i. But what we are putting forward here of the interpretation of the chi of Plato's text on the chora — by speaking om given ar received, about mark or impression, about knowledge as information, etc., all of that already draws on what tex! self says about the chora, draws on its conceptuaiggalinermeneutic apparatus. In other words, what we have just put forward, for example, for the sake, a example, on the cof “chora” in the text of Plato, reproduces or simply brings in offer itself anly by removing itself from any determination, from all “ marks or impressions to which we said it was ok. with all ts schemas, Plat -ourse on the subject of the chora. And this is true even down to this very sentence in lohich [have just made use of the llschemas, The schemata are the cut-out figures imprinted into the chara, the forms which inform it. Thus there are interpretations which would come to give form to “ehora” by leaving on it the schematic mark of their int and by depositing on it the sediment of their contribution. And yet, “chora” seems never to let itself be reached or 16d, much less broached, and above all not exhausted by these types of tropological or interpretative translation. One can- nol even say that it furnishes them with the support of a stable substratum or substance. Chora is not a subject. The hermeneu- lic types cannot inform, they cannot give form to chora except to " extent that, inaccessible, impassive, “amorphous” (amor- pom tal and silwrgin wih aur tat adoay ebelliikcist antropererphisn seems fo rocove these pes cna give place to tha But Teracigggmes Ws receptacle ono) or place (chor), thee nares dono! designate hr cocence, the sible bong of “i horas rathor ofthe ordre the ocs nor oho order of meres. 3 “rages athe eds wfich come to rilinenschvee inst whch thus i not and doos no kn the two known Fe corized gener of boing, ns ot and tis nonbeng cant but be decree. be eaugt or conceive, va the ania rorphe schemas of the verb f receNe an he ver 1 ge. Chorio, above ll nts anyhing bul & SUBPOT Or 8 sb et wich wou gi place by rceving ot by concen, onde by lting sel be concelved. How cau one deny is Seven sgniicane a a receptacle, give at fab very ames gn fot by lat? I ggicut dood, but perhaps we ve ot ye hough trough what s meant by fo rece, the = t ‘ccniate, wl cas oy dechora, ceohore: non. Pethaps its from chora that we are beginning to learn it — to ret to receive from it what its name calls up. To receive It if not to comprehend it, to conceive it, You will already have noticedMmt we now say chara and not, as convention has always, required, the chora, or again, as we might have done for the sake of caution, the word, the concept, the significance or the value of *chora.” This is for several reasons, most of which are no doubt already obvious. The definite article presupposes the exis- tence of a thing, the existent chara to which, via a common name, it would be easy to refer. But what is said about chora is that this noun does not designate any of the known or recognized or, if you lke, received types of existent, received by philosoph- ical discourse, i¢., by the ontological /ogos which lays down the law in the Timaeus: chora is neither sensible nor intelligible. w Jacques Derrida There is chora, one can sven ponder over is physis and its dynamis, oF at least ponder these ina preliminary way, but wha is thors le not and wo wil Come back later fo what tis there is can give Us think, tis there is which by the way gives noting ining place orn giving to think, whereby it wil be isky to seein Kt the equivalnt ofan 2s gibt. Instead ofthe chore shal te be content to say prudent. the word, the cornmon name, the concept, the signicaion or the value of chora? These pre vrutons would not sutfee, they presuppose estinctions (word/conceptivalue, ete) which themselves imply the possibly, at feast ofa determined este, istnct om anethe, and acts which aim a at ior ts meaning, via acts of language, desio- ators er sign postings. Alo! these acs eppea o generalies, 1 an ordey of mutislices: gonus, species, individual, type Schema, ete Now what we can read, i seems ol choran the Timpaus, is that “something” whichis nota thing, puts in ques: ton these presuppositions and these distinctions “something” a “hing and escapes Kom his order of mutiplicites. But 1 aay chow ane! nc he chor, Lam st making a noun out of tA BMA: noun tis ve, But af st ike any common noun Gave toa woman Perhaps to @ woman, rather fo @ woman, Doesnt that aggravate he risks of arihtopomorphism against which tte warted to protect ourselves? Arent these risks run by Plato himselt when he seems to “compare” as they say, chore to a roth oF 8 nurse? lent he value of receptacle also actociatod, lke passive and virgin mater, with the feminine element, and precy in Groek culture? These objections.” not without value. However, if chora indeed presents certain atrbuies of the wre ae proper noun, isn tony via ts apparent relerence to some (amount of uniqueness (and inthe Timaeus, mor rigor- sus) in ecertain passage of the Timaeus which we wil apprgersater, tere is only one chora) the referent of his reference not exist, The effacement of the ce a saying of Plato's in a certain

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