Chora

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chora (Greek χωρα) can mean one of several things:

• Localities
  • In ancient Greek, the term often takes on the general meaning of the countryside surrounding the polis.
  • It is usually the name of the greatest or more important town or village of a Greek island.
  • Chora District in the Uruzgan province of Afghanistan.
  • Chora (woreda), a district in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia
  • The Chora Church, a Byzantine church in İstanbul.

• In Philosophy
  • Plato uses chora in a sense close to space, or place in space; the milieu in which Forms materialize.

• • In Modern Philosophy
  • Chora has been object of considerable philosophical reflection, especially in contemporary French philosophy, having taken the status of a master term in the writings of Julia Kristeva,... and more recently of Jacques Derrida.

Chora, which Derrida insists must be understood without any definite article, has an acknowledged role at the very foundations of the concept of spatiality, place and placing: it signifies, at its most literal level, notions of "space", "location", "site", "region", "locale", "country": but it also contains an irreducible, yet often overlooked connection with the functions of femininity, being associated with a series of sexually-coded terms -- "mother","nurse","receptacle", and "imprint-bearer". — Elizabeth Grosz (1995) Space, time and perversion Routledge, New York & London :112

• In Literature
  • Chora is the proper name of Avendesora, or The Tree Of Life in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series during the Age of Legends.

• Other
  • Chora (moth), a genus of nolid moths.
  • Chora (software), a web-based CVS repository viewer. Part of the Horde framework.