The Urban Chora, from Pre-Ancient Athens to Postmodern Paris

China Media Research, 13(4), 2017 http://www.chinamediaresearch.net The Urban Chora, from Pre-Ancient Athens to Postmodern Paris Janell Watson Virginia Tech, USA Abstract: Jacques Derrida and Michel Serres challenge the binary logic of Western philosophy very differently, Derrida through a philosophy of discourse, Serres through a philosophy of things. Serres has begun to draw more international readers thanks to a recent shift in critical emphasis from words to things. The difference between deconstruction’s word-orientated acosmism and the newer versions of thing-oriented cosmism can be fruitfully explored by comparing Derrida to Serres on the basis of their readings of Plato’s cosmogony, focused on the figure of chora in Timaeus. [Janell Watson. The Urban Chora, from Pre-Ancient Athens to Postmodern Paris. China Media Research 2017; 13(4): 28-37]. 4 Keywords: Jacques Derrida, Michel Serres, Peter Eisenman, Plato, chora Jacques Derrida and Michel Serres share the critical concern about human-nonhuman relations ambition of overcoming the dualist, binary logic of non- manifests itself in ecocriticism, new materialism, contradiction which, they complain, has dominated animal studies, posthumanism, anthropocene studies, Western philosophy since Plato. However, they object-oriented continental philosophy, the challenge non-contradiction very differently, Derrida architecture of the fold, actor-network theory, and the through a philosophy of discourse, Serres through a concept of vibrant matter. Once again, matter matters. philosophy of things. These two thinkers, both born in As Serres puts it in his recently translated Geometry, 1930, overlapped at the École normale supérieure in the cosmos has returned as “philosophy’s paradigm, Paris, and thus come from the same intellectual time and its real model,” as in the time of the ancients, but with place. However, Serres distanced himself from the a modern scientific understanding of the physical philosophies of language which dominated French universe (2017, p. xxxi). thought during the mid-twentieth century, denouncing The difference between deconstruction’s word- the “era of the signifier” for what he calls its orientated acosmism and the newer versions of thing- “acosmism,” its abandonment of things in favor of oriented cosmism can be fruitfully explored by words (1977, p. 288). Serres speculates that twentieth- comparing Derrida to Serres on the basis of their century philosophers became obsessed with words, at readings of Plato’s cosmogony, as presented in the expense of the world of things, because “perhaps we Timaeus. Socrates and his companions task Timaeus, hated the object; perhaps we hated the world” (2015, p. knowledgeable in astronomy, to explain the origins of 51). The obsession with words by French intellectuals the cosmos and the creation of humans. In his speech, like Derrida emboldened literary scholars by locating Timaeus describes three kinds of being: eternal power in texts, at a time when science and technology intelligible models, earthly sensible copies of the were claiming increasing territory within academics, models, and thirdly the chora, which receives or politics, and economics. For several decades, most contains the first two (Plato, 2008, pt. 48e – 49a). 1 Anglophone scholars across the humanities preferred Transcribed into Latin characters as chora or khōra, Derrida’s empowerment of discourse at the expense of χώρα is the Greek word for space, place, location, the cosmos, but Serres has begun to draw more region, or country.2 Timaeus compares the chora to a international readers thanks to a more recent shift in receptacle, nurse, mother, virgin wax, imprint-bearer, critical emphasis from words to things. What has neutral perfume base, unformed gold, and a sieve for changed? sifting grain. Derrida and Serres both identify the chora The relationship between humans and the cosmos as an excluded third, incompatible with the binary logic has shifted, observes Serres. While humans once of noncontradiction which generates philosophical completely depended on the earth to survive, today the oppositions such as model and copy, intelligible and future of the planet depends on humans, now capable of sensible, logos and mythos, Being and being, or bringing about the sixth great extinction by unleashing presence and absence. As critics of the binary tradition, nuclear holocaust or setting off catastrophic climate Derrida and Serres both adopt the duality-disrupting change (Serres, 2001). Philosophies of discourse only chora as a philosophical figure of thirdness. However, address the relationship of humans to other humans. they locate the “place” designated by chora very Only a philosophy of things can effectively address the differently. Plato figures chora as both place of writing relationship of humans to the cosmos. The growing (virgin wax, imprint bearer) and place of gestation http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 28 [email protected] China Media Research, 13(4), 2017 http://www.chinamediaresearch.net (mother, nurse), but Derrida favors the figures of also suggests that chora is equally impossible within the inscription, while Serres prefers the figures of birth. domain of language because chora has “some These two very different kinds of places, inscriptive impossible relation to the possibility of naming” or matrical, occupy different kinds of space under (Derrida, 1995, p. 91).3 Their impossible chora garden various temporalities. Their deployment of chora as a will never be built, but their 1986 collaboration spatio-temporal figure shapes their relations to cities. introduces chora into the vocabulary of architectural Plato, citizen of Athens, wrote about chora during a theory (Burns, 2013). discussion of the ideal city. Derrida wrote about chora Derrida begins his essay on chora by reflecting on while designing a postmodern garden for Paris. Serres the logic of binarity, the logos he ascribes to mainstream evokes chora in describing the founding of Rome. I Western philosophy. According to his reading of contrast these versions of chora in the city, beginning Timaeus, Plato’s entire text revolves around binary with Derrida’s rendering of chora as impossible abyss, logic. As Derrida puts it, “the being-logical of logic, its followed by Serres’s celebration of chora’s matrical essential logos… forms the explicit theme of the fecundity. Warning against the pitfalls of falling for the Timaeus” (1995, p. 106). In short, logic equals binarism. temporal illusions of presence, Derrida skirts around the Derrida seizes on the chora as the excluded third edges of his choral abyss. Serres instead element capable of troubling “the very order of polarity, circumnavigates the multiple temporalities of the of polarity in general, whether dialectical or not,” cosmos while exploring the regenerative possibilities because the very thought of the chora “exceeds” offered by chora. polarity (pp. 88-89, 92). 4 Citing Plato’s words of caution regarding the difficulty of comprehending Derrida: Asexual Abyss chora, Derrida positions chora as a foreign intruder vis- Derrida completed “Khōra” (1995) a close reading à-vs the initial two types, intelligible and sensible (pp. of Plato’s Timaeus, while collaborating on a landscape 89-90). He claims that chora is “something which is not architecture project with Peter Eisenman. Bernard simply Platonic”; “something Plato cannot immediately Tschumi, a fellow deconstructionist architect, had assimilate into his own thought”; something “irreducible commissioned Eisenman and Derrida to design a garden to everything that gives Plato’s philosophy coherence”; without vegetation for his La Villette park, a Mitterand- something that cannot be assimilated by Plato himself, era Grand Project located on the site of an old by what we call Platonic ontology, nor by the slaughterhouse in northern Paris. Chora L. Works inheritance of Plato.” Referring to the extensive (1997) gathers transcripts of conversations between published commentary on Plato’s chora, he observes Eisenman’s team and Derrida; a version of the latter’s that “Many have thought it is a foreign element entering essay on chora; and related correspondence, documents, Plato’s texts from the early Greek materialists.” Derrida and drawings. During their first conversation, Eisenman agrees, telling Eisenman that “I thought it was a foreign explains how deconstruction challenges the Western graft within Plato’s text” (1997, pp. 9-11, 99). architectural tradition. Derrida presents his idea that In order to read Timaeus as a pillar of philosophical chora disrupts the Western philosophical tradition. They dualism, Derrida ignores most of the cosmogony that agree that in their allotted Paris garden space they will makes up the bulk of this Socratic dialogue. Derrida build chora, despite the problem of rendering tangibly does acknowledge that Plato’s “encyclopedic” Timaeus sensible something that, according to Plato, is neither includes not only “a general ontology” but also “a sensible nor intelligible. By choosing chora, the theology, a cosmology, a physiology, a psychology, a architect and philosopher take on their common zoology” (1995, p. 103). However, he argues, none of enemies, anthropocentrism and the metaphysics of this belongs to philosophy proper because Western presence, which they ambitiously seek to eliminate from thought has been dominated by a binary version of architecture and philosophy, respectively. Eisenman “Platonism” based on the intelligible-sensible couple.

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