The history of philosophy is mostly the history of men and their minds. However, this is not the whole story and there are a significant number of women who are remembered as philosophers. Given how hard it is to be remembered if you are a woman, these women who names appear must have been outstanding. The following two poems are about women from Ancient Greece and Ancient India. There is some information about them on the internet but quite a lot of it has to be taken with a grain of salt (the entries have improved in recent years). Reading between the lines is good feminist practice.
string two
what the philosophers say
Diotima
how the words on the page
are to be read
measured
understood
that old bull Socrates calls an afternoon
meeting a nosh up
of food and talk
all about love
they go around the circle
each one
in the steers’ stall
taking his turn
to speak at length
Socrates can’t stop talking
about the concept of fecundity
at the heart of my philosophy
since the bull walks off
how can we expect
him to invent a theory
of existence founded
on the metaphor of pregnancy?
I’m no figment
of his imagination
too real to conceive
through solitary thrills
becoming he calls it
a dynamic philosophy
concocted over my kitchen table
a trapeza
two equilateral triangles
how the dots on the page
are to be read
measured
understood
a stack of wood
intervals
the lambda letter
from the snake’s mouth
when I’m in full flight my intellect
swings I explore
not static existence
but moments of between-ness
the metaxu
the amphibious zone
between existence
and reality a method
of communication
the wall at the dead end
the means
by which prisoners
speak
trapeza:
Greek: table; also a rectangle comprised of two triangles of ten dots.
metaxu: Greek: between.
Gargi
how words are heard
a great listener I am
I have to be
because my words
are not welcome
my name is Rishini Gargi
I am plain precocious
a composer of hymns
daughter of a sage
I challenge Yajnavalka
who claims that being
cannot be named
a word weaver
stringing him along
I ask
on what is the world woven
warp and woof?
he demeans me
don’t think too hard
girlie
your head will burst
haven’t we all heard
that thinking
will make you unattractive?
and so I persist
I keep on asking questions
he has an answer
for everything
not impressed
I accuse him
of being incapable of listening
incapable of thinking
I think why bother?
stand up and leave
walk through the between
space flanked by impermanence
the matrix the otaprota
the woof and warp of
existence
reality stitched
the universe
a sound strung
string bag
dilly bag
on the other side
sanatana
the old eternal philosophy
the unchanging nature of immortals
the wall which divides
these prisoners
how history is passed down
not vertically
but by twists and turns
a knot in the
labyrinth of lies and dead ends
Rishini:
Sanskrit: female sage.
otaprota: Sanskrit: woof and warp;
matrix.
sanaatana: Sanskrit: unending,
eternal.
If you want to know more about Diotima see my 1994 article: “Diotima Speaks through the Body”. In Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist Essays in Plato and Aristotle, Bat-Ami Bar On (ed), State University of New York Press, Albany.
Women philosophers have a hard time being remembered. Diotima, although Socrates talks about her at length and with some respect, is considered to be lying about her existence by the domain of male philosophers. I find it fascinating how often some man will say, Oh, that woman can’t be real. It is usually self-serving rubbish on the part of the male speaker. In my 1994 article (which I wrote in 1982) I analyse the language of Socrates and suggest that he could not have known as much about pregnancy and birth without instruction from a woman, namely Diotima. The photo of Diotima online shows her headless;
Gargi was born about three centuries before Diotima, around 700 BCE. She is said to have written hymns in the Rg Veda. Her debate with Yajnavalka on questions concerning the soul (atman) is one of the things she is best remembered for. This debate is recorded in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
The poems in thispost are from my book, Cow (2011), Spinifex Press
© Susan Hawthorne, 2019
(Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne.
Re: Susan Hawthorne – whenever I read your work I feel like a real female person.