Adriana Cavarero

Works

• 1990In Spite of Plato

  Rereads four female figures of ancient texts – Penelope, a Thracian maidservant, Demeter and Diotima – against the patriarchal order of the philosophical tradition.

• 1997Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood

  Following Arendt, describes each person as a unique, “narratable self” whose life story only others can tell.

Position

Cavarero’s work rereads the philosophical tradition from the standpoint of sexual difference and develops, with Hannah Arendt, a philosophy of uniqueness. “In Spite of Plato” takes four female figures – Penelope, the Thracian maidservant who laughs at Thales falling into a well, Demeter and Diotima – out of their patriarchal context and reads them as signs of another order, one that begins with birth rather than death and with bodies rather than the abstract soul. In “Relating Narratives” Cavarero takes up Arendt’s distinction between what someone is and who someone is: the who is shown not by a definition but by the life story that others can tell, so that the self is from the outset exposed and related to others. Judith Butler built on this in “Giving an Account of Oneself” (2005), while stressing more strongly that the self remains partly opaque to itself. Later books extend the approach to the voice as the unique sound of a body, to violence against the defenceless, which Cavarero calls “horrorism”, and to a critique of the upright, self-sufficient subject in favour of a posture of inclination and care. The work draws on Luce Irigaray’s thought of sexual difference and on the collective work of Diotima. Some readers have asked whether an ethics of uniqueness and narration can account for social structures and conflict; Cavarero’s later work on plurality and democracy takes up this question.

Life & context

Adriana Cavarero was born on 7 May 1947 in Bra in Piedmont. After studying philosophy, Cavarero worked at the University of Padua until 1984; Cavarero’s first book, “Dialettica e politica in Platone” (1974), dealt with Plato’s political thought. In 1983 Cavarero was among the founders of the women’s philosophical community Diotima at the University of Verona, together with Luisa Muraro and others, and contributed to its first collective volume, “Il pensiero della differenza sessuale” (1987). At Verona Cavarero became professor of political philosophy and has also taught as a visiting professor in the United States, among others at New York University. “In Spite of Plato” (1990) was translated into German in 1992 and into English in 1995. It was followed by “Stately Bodies” (Corpo in figure, 1995), on images of the body politic, “Relating Narratives” (1997), “For More than One Voice” (A più voci, 2003), on the voice, “Horrorism” (Orrorismo, 2007), on violence against the defenceless, “Inclinations” (Inclinazioni), a critique of the upright subject, and “Surging Democracy” (Democrazia sorgiva, 2019). All of them have appeared in English and are widely discussed in feminist and political theory.

Further main works

• Stately Bodies (Corpo in figure, 1995)
• Relating Narratives (Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti, 1997)
• For More than One Voice (A più voci, 2003)
• Horrorism (Orrorismo, 2007)
• Surging Democracy (Democrazia sorgiva, 2019)