Uninvited: Talking Back to Plato
Plato's Symposium depicts a group of men giving a series of speeches about the nature of love, with themes ranging from religion and metaphysics to medicine and pregnancy. The lone woman in the room, a "flute girl," is sent away as the discussion turns to serious matters; at the same time, the wisest of the men attributes his theories to a woman, the possibly fictional Diotima. Despite their absence from this important intellectual exchange, women are part of Symposium. What can contemporary feminist readers do with this troubling yet immeasurably influential work? In Uninvited historian Carla Nappi and philosopher Carrie Jenkins talk back to Plato in poetry, inspired by the voices of women characters who were not previously permitted to speak. Images and ideas from Symposium are refracted through multiple lenses to reveal a tumult of mystical, intellectual, pedagogical, and sexual ideologies. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrific, these poems dance within and between the lines of Symposium, carving space for new kinds of conversations about love, with themes ranging from gender and voice to power and violence. Designed to be read with or without prior knowledge of Plato, this book invites the uninvited to join a strange, amorphous, and unending conversation on the nature of love and desire - and on the possibilities intellectual and creative activity can offer.
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Uninvited: Talking Back to Plato
Plato's Symposium depicts a group of men giving a series of speeches about the nature of love, with themes ranging from religion and metaphysics to medicine and pregnancy. The lone woman in the room, a "flute girl," is sent away as the discussion turns to serious matters; at the same time, the wisest of the men attributes his theories to a woman, the possibly fictional Diotima. Despite their absence from this important intellectual exchange, women are part of Symposium. What can contemporary feminist readers do with this troubling yet immeasurably influential work? In Uninvited historian Carla Nappi and philosopher Carrie Jenkins talk back to Plato in poetry, inspired by the voices of women characters who were not previously permitted to speak. Images and ideas from Symposium are refracted through multiple lenses to reveal a tumult of mystical, intellectual, pedagogical, and sexual ideologies. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrific, these poems dance within and between the lines of Symposium, carving space for new kinds of conversations about love, with themes ranging from gender and voice to power and violence. Designed to be read with or without prior knowledge of Plato, this book invites the uninvited to join a strange, amorphous, and unending conversation on the nature of love and desire - and on the possibilities intellectual and creative activity can offer.
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Uninvited: Talking Back to Plato

Uninvited: Talking Back to Plato

by Carrie Jenkins, Carla Nappi
Uninvited: Talking Back to Plato

Uninvited: Talking Back to Plato

by Carrie Jenkins, Carla Nappi

eBook

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Overview

Plato's Symposium depicts a group of men giving a series of speeches about the nature of love, with themes ranging from religion and metaphysics to medicine and pregnancy. The lone woman in the room, a "flute girl," is sent away as the discussion turns to serious matters; at the same time, the wisest of the men attributes his theories to a woman, the possibly fictional Diotima. Despite their absence from this important intellectual exchange, women are part of Symposium. What can contemporary feminist readers do with this troubling yet immeasurably influential work? In Uninvited historian Carla Nappi and philosopher Carrie Jenkins talk back to Plato in poetry, inspired by the voices of women characters who were not previously permitted to speak. Images and ideas from Symposium are refracted through multiple lenses to reveal a tumult of mystical, intellectual, pedagogical, and sexual ideologies. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrific, these poems dance within and between the lines of Symposium, carving space for new kinds of conversations about love, with themes ranging from gender and voice to power and violence. Designed to be read with or without prior knowledge of Plato, this book invites the uninvited to join a strange, amorphous, and unending conversation on the nature of love and desire - and on the possibilities intellectual and creative activity can offer.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780228002703
Publisher: McGill-Queens University Press
Publication date: 05/21/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Carrie Jenkins is Canada Research Chair and professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia. Carla Nappi is a historical pataphysician who holds the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in History at the University of Pittsburgh.

Table of Contents

Prefatory Note vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introductory Dialogue: Apollodorus and Friend - C.J. 3

Many-voiced 3

The Speech of Phaedrus - C.N. 5

The Speech of Pausanias - C.N. 9

The Speech of Eryximachus - C.J. 18

The Speech of Aristophanes - C.J. 26

Before Aristophanes 26

The Speech of Agathon - C.J. 31

A Crown for Aphrodite 31

Socrates Questions Agathon - C.N. 46

Sappho Questions Medusa 46

Diotima Questions Socrates - C.N. 56

Quotation 56

The Speech of Diotima - C.J. 58

Blonde Horse 58

Myrto 58

Meanwhile 59

Alcibiades's Entrance - C.J. 60

The Speech of Alcibiades - G.J. 61

A Treasury of Incomplete Curses 61

Final Dialogue - C.J. 66

Static Transmission (2000 yrs, HD 1080p) 66

Afterword: Four Invitations to the Text 71

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