Adriana Cavarero

Franco Restaino

due secoli di battaglie teoriche e pratiche

Le filosofie femministe

Professor of Political Philosophy Adriana Cavarero

Drawing from a diverse array of thinkers from philosophical and literary traditions, this text shows how narrative models can open new ways of thinking about formation of human identities.

Storytelling and Selfhood

Relating Narratives

Nonostante Platone. Figure femminili nella filosofia antica

filosofia dell'espressione vocale

A più voci

Judith Butler

Bonnie Honig

Toward a Feminist Ethics of Nonviolence brings together major feminist thinkers to debate Cavarero’s call for a postural ethics of nonviolence and a sociality rooted in bodily interdependence. Toward a Feminist Ethics of Nonviolence brings together three major feminist thinkers—Adriana Cavarero, Judith Butler, and Bonnie Honig—to debate Cavarero’s call for a postural ethics of nonviolence. The book consists of three longer essays by Cavarero, Butler, and Honig, followed by shorter responses by a range of scholars that widen the dialogue, drawing on post-Marxism, Italian feminism, queer theory, and lesbian and gay politics. Together, the authors contest the boundaries of their common project for a pluralistic, heterogeneous, but urgent feminist ethics of nonviolence.

Toward a Feminist Ethics of Nonviolence

Ogni essere umano desidera ricevere da un altro il racconto della propria storia: solo gli altri possono scorgere il disegno di un'identità e raccontarlo in sua presenza. Non "che cosa" è ciascuno, ma "chi" è: si potrebbe sintetizzare così la categoria di "unicità" elaborata da Hannah Arendt. In una prospettiva femminista, Cavarero utilizza l'unicità per polemizzare contro il Soggetto forte della tradizione metafisica e la soggettività frammentata postmoderna. Karen Blixen, Edipo, Borges, Ulisse, Rilke, Euridice, Sheherazade vengono convocati a testimoniare le varie forme in cui un individuo riceve da una narrazione il proprio ritratto. I rapporti d'amore, l'amicizia femminile, l'esperienza femminista dei gruppi di autocoscienza e la generale attitudine delle donne al racconto sono gli scenari in cui la narrazione si sposa con la politica.

filosofia della narrazione

Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti

In this brilliant book, one of the world's most provocative feminist theorists and political philosophers introduces a new word--horrorism--to capture the experience of violence. Unlike terror, horrorism is a form of violation grounded in the offense of disfiguration and massacre. Numerous outbursts of violence fall within Adriana Cavarero's category of horrorism, especially when the phenomenology of violence is considered from the perspective of the victim rather than that of the warrior. Through her searing analysis, Cavarero proves that violence against the helpless claims a specific vocabulary, one that has been known for millennia, and not just to the Western tradition.

Naming Contemporary Violence

Horrorism

The human voice does not deceive. The one who is speaking is inevitably revealed by the singular sound of her voice, no matter "what" she says. Starting from the given uniqueness of every voice, Cavarero rereads the history of philosophy through its peculiar evasion of this embodied uniqueness.

Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression

For More Than One Voice

figure femminili nella filosofia antica

Nonostante Platone

Words like 'terrorism' and 'war' are no longer capable of encompassing the scope of cntemporary violence. With this book, Cavarero effectively renders such terms obsolete. She introduces a new word, 'horrorism', to capture the experience of violence.

This pathbreaking work pursues two interwoven themes. Firstly, it engages in a deconstruction of Ancient philosopher's texts--mainly from Plato, but also from Homer and Parmenides--in order to free four Greek female figures from the patriarchal discourse which for centuries had imprisoned them in a particular role. Secondly, it attempts to construct a symbolic female order, reinterpreting these figures from a new perspective. Building on the theory of sexual difference, Cavarero shows that death is the central category on which the whole edifice of traditional philosophy is based. By contrast, the category of birth provides the thread with which new concepts of feminist criticism can be woven together to establish a fresh way of thinking.

A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy

In Spite of Plato

In this new and accessible book, Italy's best known feminist philosopher examines the moral and political significance of vertical posture in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of inclination. Contesting the classical figure of homo erectus or "upright man," Adriana Cavarero proposes an altruistic, open model of the subject—one who is inclined toward others. Contrasting the masculine upright with the feminine inclined, she references philosophical texts (by Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Elias Canetti, and others) as well as works of art (Barnett Newman, Leonardo da Vinci, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Alexander Rodchenko) and literature (Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf).

A Critique of Rectitude

Inclinations

Stately Bodies explores the curious prevalence of bodily metaphors in conceptions of noncorporeal institutions: the state, the law, and politics itself. The book builds on work from Adriana Cavarero's well-received study, In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy. In that work Cavarero--as political theorist, philosopher, classicist, and close reader--examines literary and philosophical texts from Greek antiquity to modern to reveal the paradox that characterizes notions of the "body politic" in Western political philosophy. She examines bodily metaphor in political discourse and in fictional depictions of politics, including Sophocles' Antigone, Plato's Timaeus, Livy, John of Salisbury, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Hobbes' Leviathan. An appendix explores two texts by women that disrupt these notions: Maria Zambrano's Tomb of Antigone and Ingeborg Bachmann's Undine Goes. Cavarero exposes the problematic nature of the mind/body dualism that has been essential in Western thought. Her insight that the expelled, depoliticized body is a female one becomes an instrument for decoding many paradoxical tropes of the political body. For instance, Cavarero revisits Antigone as the tragedy in which a body that is displaced, bleeding, and matrilinear allows the construction of a political order where misogynous rationality rules. Throughout the book, Cavarero argues that women have been cast by male thinkers into the realm of the corporeal as nonpolitical, and also suggests that this nonpolitical position is also a source of knowledge and power, that politics is a masculine pursuit that should not be admired or envied. Adriana Cavarero is Professor of Philosophy, University of Verona, and frequently is Visiting Professor. New York University. Her books Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood and In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy were published by Routledge.

Adriana Cavarero

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