La Nouvelle Vague: The Liquid Feminine in Plato’s Republic

Résumé 0

In this paper, I am interested by Plato’s three waves in Republic Book V, in which Socrates makes three daring proposals for his ideal city: first, inclusion of women in the guardian class and their education (Pl. Resp. 453e-454e); second, abolition of private property and family (Pl. Resp. 457b-c); lastly, that philosophers should be kings and kings, philosophers (Pl. Resp. 472c-e). I explore the unexploited potential and probe the significance of the liquid imagery by applying Deleuzian paradigms to Book V of Plato’s Republic, in order to shed new light on the ancient text, and, thereby, understand these waves to be truly sensuous and material. I intervene in a scholarly debate known as “Plato’s feminism” and identify the feminine principle of becoming and flux, exemplified by the fluid and cathartic presence of the waves. I argue that the presence of the sea, which opens up into feminine space and attracts bodies to itself, mediates the “utopian experience” and sets into motion what I identity to be a cinematic movement, a gendered movement. The sea creates the utopian aesthetic, which is also a cinematic one, because this medium, both fluid and sensuous, invites the reader into its landscape and links up a series of images into the narrative.