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In the opening chapter of In Spite of Plato, Adriana Cavarero steals a glance past the imposing presence of heroes and philosophers, to catch sight of Penelope as she sits patiently weaving and unweaving, and weaving together again. As she waits for Odysseus to return, the unbroken rhythm of her movement generates an "anomalous' space, outside the patriarchal order (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 12). Penelope's refusal to finish her work holds off her suitors and the possibility of re-marriage. Her endless weaving and unweaving allows her both to retreat from "the great events of history — the history of men, of heroes' (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 13), and to escape the order of domestic productivity, for her work is never brought to a useful state of completion. The narrative scene is further complicated, on Cavarero's reading, because Penelope does not turn to the solace that philosophical reflection might offer her in her seclusion: on the contrary, the infinitely repeated process of entwining and undoing is at odds with the time of philosophy in its orientation towards eternal and unchanging Being. Cavarero suggests that the bodily rhythms and gestures of Penelope's repeated movements instead hold open a space for a female symbolic order that encompasses Penelope and her handmaids, and that is "so evidently gendered in the feminine that this life shared in a common horizon allows every woman to recognise herself in another woman' (Cavarero, In Spite of Plato 30)

DOI: 10.1057/9780230206434_5

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