Chorological Intersections: Chiasmus in Chorology – Encounter in The Interval

This paper argues for a chorological re-inscription of the Platonic-Byzantine chôra in what I call the field of contemporary ‘cultural intersectionality’, in the attempt of looking beyond Byzantium to explore the relevance of such old term today. It has been argued that the full meaning of chorology is revealed in the medial position (metaxú) of the chôra, a topic addressed by such scholars, as John Sallis problematizing in his chorology how to see the thing not in its appearance, but as «the thing itself in its own chôra». Likewise, Giorgio Agamben has shown in his recent book Irrealizzabile how the mediality of the chôra allows to define «the thing in the medium of its knowability» and to admit that politics cannot be anything other than chorology. «True philosophy, like true politics, is a chorology». He argues that in so far as the chôra is the third genre (genos), the medium (medio) that holds together the intelligible and the sensible, there should inevitably result the ‘fourth’ from this union. He maintains that this fourth has the structure of chiasmus. The contribution of this paper resides in that it takes further this idea and explores chiasmus in chorology as a generative dynamic principle. It postulates that the chiastic coincidence between the intelligible and the sensible could be imagined both, in Byzantium as well as in the contemporary, though on different premises, as a point of intersection that would bring together a world of division and create a bridge for reconciliation, and an auspicious ground or interval (metaxú) for a chorological encounter that may reveal the things «in their own chôra». In promoting chiasmus in chorology, we dedicate this encounter in the interval to the Other and Othering as fundamentally distinct, unique, and even sometimes opposing.