2.49 FC – Byzantine Chôra and Beyond – Chorological Intersections

In the history of the Platonic chôra (Timaeus) there is an interesting case of appropriation of this concept revealed in a most unpredictable place: the walls of the Byzantine Chora church from the outskirts of Constantinople. Although this church has been examined since 1948 by eminent Byzantine scholars, the concept itself of the Byzantine chôra has been for the first time theoretically addressed at the end of the nineties and the beginning of 2000, within a newly established field of research in Byzantine studies concerned with the theory of image and sacred space. From this perspective, Byzantine chôra has emerged as a generative space, performative in its essence, thematized as “Byzantine chorography” (Isar 2001). This new approach has been, shortly after, adopted by other scholars Byzantinists becoming instrumental to address the Byzantine nature of this generative “in-between” space. The Byzantine nature of space in which the intelligible intermingles with the visible world would have remained otherwise an unresolved philosophical doubt, or a mere paradox. This group session of communications takes the term to task to a new level, bringing together scholars of the chôra from different disciplines – philosophy, religion, language and rhetorics, art history and cultural studies – to interrogate the shifting meanings of the term across time, history, the arts and politics. The papers will bring to light the intricate facets of the chôra space, as revealed by sacred texts and liturgical performances in Byzantium and in the Latin world, inquiring as well into the relevance of the concept today. The aim of the session is to identify and finally define, through shared methodologies, a typology of space favoring the active, generative position “in-between” that is still actual, on the verge of appearing as an emergent opportunity for new social possibilities or “new political metaphysics (Cezary Was) – beyond Byzantium into the contemporary.