located bodies |
an argument Ð | |
we find ourselves in connections | |
through articulations of people and things | |
in particular circumstances (location/context matters) | |
Ð for distributed bodies | |
ten located bodies |
this will be my particular take on our course bodies in place Ð presenting ten different kinds of located body | |
it will be by no means an exhaustive list | |
they will not be exclusive categories but will overlap and complement | |
the ten are suggestive rather than definitive | |
located bodies Ð one the citizen body |
Socrates in Athens - the classical polis |
the dialogue Ð Crito |
Crito wants to get Socrates out of Athens | |
Socrates answers with an argument about the state and its citizens | |
about the constitution of the state and order | |
and about the constitution of the good life |
the polis |
Socrates discusses duty and the obligations of the individual to the collective | |
some terms he uses | |
hoi Athenaioi Ð the Athenians Ð fellow politai | |
hoi polloi Ð the many, the majority, the mob | |
he polis Ð the state | |
to koinon Ð the commonwealth | |
hoi nomoi Ð laws | |
homologia Ð the (social) contract | |
consider Crito 50a |
the alternative to his citizen identity |
Thessaly Ð dislocation | |
some terms applied to Thessaly | |
metoikein Ð to live as an alien | |
(no) homologia Ð no social contract | |
ataxia Ð disorder (cf kosmos) | |
akolasia Ð license and incontinence | |
Socrates would be out of place and laughable |
Athens Ð hoi Athenaioi |
Socrates and Plato are discoursing in the city of Athens |
the urban state |
a public sphere for an elite citizen body | |
spaces for a leisured class to meet, talk, take decisions | |
a physical setting for an oral and literate culture | |
where democracy happened |
the ekklesia Ð the assembly | |
the boule Ð the council | |
the importance of public speaking, leadership, argument, rhetoric |
democratic imperialism |
the Athenian Empire | |
class conflict Ð old aristocracy, new citizen mobility, citizens and others | |
old patterns of patronage and leadership giving way | |
war Ð with Sparta, Korinth and Syracuse Ð and defeat | |
the sophists |
Socrates was identified with this group of intellectuals and teachers who serviced the desire on the part of the citizen body to learn and practice public discourse | |
some names Ð Gorgias, Protogoras, Euthydemos | |
developing an intellectual discourse pertinent to these urban and political spaces | |
Plato despised them (seeing Socrates as pursuing not the skill of discourse per se but its object Ð questions of right and wrong) | |
sophistry and dialectics |
the importance of peitho Ð persuasion | |
sometimes caricatured as the skill of arguing any case Ð whatever the truth or consequences | |
sometimes associated with an aversion to popular will Ð seen as ignorant and manipulated by the skilled speaker (this sometimes given as the reason for the downfall of Athenian democracy) | |
the sophists |
part of an intellectual shift to making people the center of thought and debate | |
through some classics oppositions such as | |
nomos and phusis Ð convention and reality | |
might and right | |
located bodies Ð one the citizen body |
where is it located? | |
in such urban, urbane | |
and political spaces | |
riddled with contradiction and tension | |
the spaces and the community | |
constitute each other | |
Athens is the Athenians | |
just as the physical community | |
is the citizen | |
Socrates relates himself to this | |
polis of constituted politai | |
Slide 15 |