Sacred geography: The significance of place in the history of origins

This project investigates the concept of place and how the space between Being and Becoming as set forth in Plato's Timaeus has been carried out in gender relations, philosophical positions and psychoanalytic discourse. The problem, having to do with the ritual of capturing a picture of the moment and examining its meaning in detail, is about the mechanics of the story wherein vague statements, facts and conjecture compensate for memory lapses, gaps in time and loss. The question is whether the invisible affects of our cultural heritage that drawn out in psychological portraits and mythical consciousness attached to gods, goddesses, warriors and statesmen can be intimately linked to a site where real decisions based on real possibilities are made.;Plato identifies the interval between Being and Becoming as chora which is a notion of a feminine Receptacle that has no substance of its own and takes its identity from whatever enters into it. As the source of the underlying stages of the development of an individual's life and character that are expressed in human affairs, chora is Plato's special weapon for gaining insight into something that has vanished and for understanding the tendencies of change. In order to analyze its function in relation to feminist philosophy, I imagine chora as a cross-section of Plato's reality and evaluate it in reference to the writings of Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida, Jung, Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray and Noddings.;Since chora is an abstract concept that doesn't stay in one form or in one place, my task is to understand how it is used to communicate a perspective or point of view. As a pragmatic entity that fulfills its original role by consummating the function it is given to perform, my research reveals that filling the silence triggered by something amiss depends upon forming a mental image to put in its place. I conclude that contrary to Plato's assumptions about feminine nature, chora is an analytic resource to contest levels of meaning and other forms of power in technologically mediated systems.