Rickert.+Toward+the+Chora

=Rickert, Thomas J. "Toward the Chora: Kristeva, Derrida, and Ulmer on Emplaced Invention."= //Philosophy and Rhetoric// 40.1 2007. 251-273. Print//.//

**Abstract** No abstract.

**Argument** Thomas Rickert sets out to explore the chora; here he details the history of the chora, beginning with Plato's reference the territorial chora in //Timaeus //. It displays the current complex shifting of systems in the social and technological worlds, while trying to understand the mind as “commingling” with the body. From Plato to Kristeva to Derrida, and most recently, to Ulmer, the chora has emerged as a form of brainstorming, concerned with how to bring the felt nature of the self-conscious into reality. Of which can open up possibilities for invention and rhetorical production, from disturbing what would seem to be familiar and prominent concepts. By accessing the chora, students are able to access a new rhetorical space, concerned with how things feel, rather than the objective meaning. The key is to understand the post-literate concept of who we are, how we think, and how we live, and in turn, to translate that into what we write. Rickert theorizes the concerns that have developed about bodies in space, which have led to philosophies about creation, beginnings and invention. The modern work on the chora implies there is no clear line of “in here” and “out there.” Following the notion that there is not a precise method, instead it is “immersed in, negotiating, and harnessing complex ecologies of systems and information.” Derrida proposes that rhetoric has no precise place in invention due to the constant withdrawal it goes through. Kristeva has the philosophy of invention “inventing” itself, and creating continuing cycles.

**Key Passages** "[...] as [Andy] Clark puts it, "everyday notions of 'mind' and 'person' pick out deeply plastic, open-ended systems," we should begin to consider media not simply the //medium// by which we interact and communicate with others, but in a quite literal sense a //place//. It is an architectural component of our informational scaffolding, functioning as an exterior co-repository for the thoughts and actions--activities we customarily locate as beginning exclusively within our minds," (252).

"[...] the chora transforms our sense of beginning, creation, and invention by placing them concretely within manual environments, informational spaces, and affective (or bodily) registers, and in the case of Derrida, also by displacing them," (252).

"In short, the chora helps us understand that rhetorical concepts like "beginning," "invention," and "rhetorical space" are not in fact clear, and that, far from this being only a philosophical-theoretical concern, such inquiry can itself lead to innovative inventional practices ," (253).

"The book--two hundred pages of notes, drawings, essays, and transcripts, collected in an artful design and inviting commentary--documents for years of travails that ultimately produces...nothing by the book itself. No garden is constructed," (266).

"Regarding the placement of computers/data in our environment: ...it should also be remarked that when such transitions occur, they inevitably transform who we are in relation to that environment," (269).

"First, as Plato, Kristeva, and Derrida have all suggested, the chora is only approachable through bastard discourses, or as if in a dream; like a black hole, we perceive it only through its effects. The chora is the receptacle, but it simultaneously withdraws, and because of this it cannot, //stricto sensu//, be //represented//," (269).

"What are we to think of writing? Simply this: to take this fundamental insight and begin to think it through and //invent out of it//, in all the myriad ways available, about what is of interest and concern, but most particularly about what happens when we think and we invent," (270).

**Selected Works Cited** Derrida, Jacques. 1983. "The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils." //Diacritics // 13(3):2-20.

 -. 1995. //On the Name. // Trans. David Wood, John P. Leavey Jr., and Ian McLeod. Stanford: Stanford UP.

 Derrida, Jacques, and Peter Eisenman. 1997. //Chora L Works //. Ed. Jeffrey Kipnis and Thomas Leeser. New York: Monacelli.

 Kristeva, Julia. 1984. //Revolution in Poetic Language //. New York: Columbia UP.

 Ulmer, Gregory L. 1985. //Applied Grammatology //. Baltimore: The John Hopkins UP.