This special issue of Angelaki: New Work in the Theoretical Humanities - book series invites contributions that revisit the concept of khôra, introduced in Plato’s Timaeus as a “third kind” beyond being and becoming, a matrix, a receptacle, and reinterpreted in contemporary philosophy, most notably by Derrida. Situated between presence and absence, intelligibility and materiality, khôra resists stable categorization while remaining indispensable for thinking space, inscription, and receptivity. We seek papers that engage khôra across disciplines, exploring its implications for spatial theory, media, politics, ecology, and aesthetics, as well as its limits and possible reconfigurations today.

Argument

This special issue (33.5) invites contributions that revisit the concept of khôra, introduced in Plato’s Timaeus as a “third kind” beyond being and becoming, a matrix, a receptacle, and reinterpreted in contemporary philosophy, most notably by Derrida. Situated between presence and absence, intelligibility and materiality, khôra resists stable categorization while remaining indispensable for thinking space, inscription, and receptivity. We seek papers that engage khôra across disciplines, exploring its implications for spatial theory, media, politics, ecology, and aesthetics, as well as its limits and possible reconfigurations today.

Contributors are encouraged to explore the following subjects, as already apparent in the presentation/argumentaire of the edited volume, however these are not exclusive (an indicative non-exhaustive bibliography that might give some directions is included in the end) :

• Platonic interpretations, as well as pre-platonic and later antique (i.e. Neoplatonist , e.g. Plotinus) references and interpretations
• Potential later uses and mentions of the term, e.g. in Byzantine, Roman, and Medieval texts
• Modern and Contemporary uses, mentions, studies, interpretations of the term : e.g. Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling’s commentary on the Timaeus, Bergson, Heidegger, Phenomenology (Husserl, Richir, etc.), Whitehead, Derrida, Deleuze, Feminism (Grosz, Irigaray, Kristeva, etc.), John Sallis, Aesthetics (e.g. in Arts, Performance and Architecture).
• Accounts from Charles Taylor, John Caputo, Richard Kearney, other post-secular thinkers.
• Non-western equivalent terms/concepts/ideas, or usages and interpretations, in Hindu or Buddhist philosophy or elsewhere, as for example in Nishida Kitarō, or in Indigenous cultures.
• Khôra and digital space / AI
• Khôra in architecture or urban studies
• Khôra and/in feminist philosophy, especially as applied to the limits and fault lines of gender.
• Khôra and decolonial spatial theory
• Khôra in literature or visual art, especially accounts of place or materiality in literature.
• Khôra and affect / embodiment
• Khôra and environmental thought, especially in terms of the idea of the ground.
• Animal Studies
• Object oriented ontology
• Khôra and psychology/subjectivity

Submission guidelines

Chapters shall be 5000-8500 (max) words, inclusive of bibliography and notes.

Contributions can include the following : original essays, interviews, and “review articles” (Angelaki does not accept standard book reviews though). Translations to English will be taken into account, as long as the responsibility for producing work of publishable quality in the English language lies with the author.

The Special Issue will also be published as a monograph-type book by Routledge in the Angelaki : New Work in the Theoretical Humanities - book series.

Please submit a title and an abstract/brief-outline proposals of between 300-800 words. Additionally, please include an up-to-date curriculum vitae (CV). The deadline for submissions is August 01, 2026. Please send your materials to Nicholas Birns (nb2003@nyu.edu) and Marina Christodoulou (marina.n.christodoulou@gmail.com), who can also address any inquiries you may have.

The timeline is below :

• August 01, 2026 – Abstracts/brief outlines due from CFP
• September 15, 2026 – Notification of Preliminary Acceptance of Proposals or Rejection
• September 15, 2027 – Completed Manuscripts Due, Editorial Reviews Start
• January 15, 2028 – Editorial Reviews Completed
• March 01, 2028 – Revisions Completed, Final Manuscript Submission, Final Approval of Manuscripts
• May 15, 2028 – Delivery of material to Angelaki. Beginning of Production Process (Copy Edits and Proofs)
• September 2028 – Special Issue Publication Online
• 2029 – Republication in the Routledge Book Series

Editors 

• Nicholas Birns: Adjunct Associate Professor, New York University
• Marina Christodoulou: Lecturer in Philosophy, Constructor University Bremen

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Indicative Bibliography

Bianchi, Εmanuela. “Receptacle/Chōra : Figuring the Errant Feminine in Plato’s Timaeus.” Hypatia 21, no. 4 (2006) : 124-146. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2006.tb01131.x.

Bigger, Charles P. Between Chora and the Good : Metaphor’s Metaphysical Neighborhood. Perspectives in Continental Philosophy. New York : Fordham University Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.5422/fso/9780823223503.001.0001.

Cherniss, Harold, “A Much Misread Passage of the Timaeus (Timaeus 49 C 7-50 B 5),” The American Journal of Philology 75, no. 2 (1954) : 113–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/292030.

Derrida, Jacques. “Khōra.” In Jacques Derrida, and Thomas Dutoit (ed.). On the Name. Translated by David Wood, John P. Leavey, and Ian McLeod. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press (Meridian : Crossing Aesthetics), 1995, 87-127 [Translation of : Derrida, Jacques 1993 : Khôra. Paris : Galilée].

Derrida, Jacques. et al. Chora L Works : Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman. New York : Monacelli Press, 1997.

El-Bizri, Nader, “ON KAI KHORA : Situating Heidegger between the Sophist and the Timaeus,” Studia Phaenomenologica 4 (2004), pp. 73–98.

El-Bizri, Nader. “Qui Êtes-Vous Chora ? ’Receiving Plato’s Timaeus.” Existentia Meletai-Sophias 11 (2001) : 473-490.

Farrell Krell, David, “Female Parts in ‘Timaeus,’” Arion : A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 2, no. 3 (1975) : 400–421. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163387.

Grosz, Elizabeth, “Women, Chora, Dwelling,” ANY : Architecture New York No. 4, Architecture and the Feminine : Mop-Up Work (January/February 1994)22-28 ; (republished in Postmodern Cities and Spaces S Watson and K Gibson, ed. (Blackwell, 1995, 47-58)

Hernandez, Marta. “La khôra du Timée : Derrida, lecteur de Platon” Appareil [En ligne], 11 (2013), mis en ligne le 26 septembre 2013, consulté le 29 juillet 2016. URL : http://appareil.revues.org/1780

Hocking, Jeffrey. “Khora : Gift or Threat ? Exploring the Possibilities of the Abyss for Richard Kearney and the God of Promise.” Postmodernism, Culture, and Religion 4 (2011). Online at https://www.academia.edu/1463548/Khora_Gift_or_Threat_Exploring_The_Possibilities_Of_The_Abyss_For_Richard_Kearney_And_The_God_Of_Promise.

Hyland, Drew, Questioning Platonism : Continental Interpretations of Plato, SUNY Press, 2012.

Irigaray, Luce. “Plato’s Hystera.” In Speculum of the Other Woman, 241-364. Cornell University Press, 1985.

Isar, Nicoletta “Chôra : Tracing the Presence,” Review of European Studies 1, no. 1 (June 2009) : 42, accessed November 21, 2011, http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/ index.php/res/article/view/2467

Johansen, Thomas Kjeller. Plato’s Natural Philosophy : A Study of the ‘Timaeus-Critias’. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511518478.

Kearney, Richard. “God or Khora,” in Strangers, Gods and Monsters : Interpreting Otherness. London/New York : Routledge, 2003.

Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language : A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. European Perspectives. New York : Columbia University Press, 1980.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror : An Essay on Abjection. European Perspectives. New York : Columbia University Press, 1982.

Krummel, John W.M. “Anontology and the Issue of Being and Nothing in Kitarō Nishida.” In Nothingness in Asian Philosophy, edited by JeeLoo Liu and Douglas L. Berger, 264-284. New York : Routledge, 2014. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315774244.

Margaroni, Maria. “‘The Lost Foundation’ : Kristeva’s Semiotic Chora and Its Ambiguous Legacy.” Hypatia 20, no. 1 (2005) : 78–98. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810844.

Miller, Dana R. The third kind in Plato’s Timaeus [Volume 145 of Hypomnemata (Göttingen) : Untersuchungen Zur Antike und Zu Ihrem Nachleben Series]. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003. https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666252440.

Miller, Dana, The Third Kind in Plato’s Timaeus, Hypomnemata : Untersuchungen zur Antike und zu ihrem Nachleben 145, Göttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003, 9-18 (“Intriduction”) ; 19-36 (Chapter I : “The interpretation of Plato’s Receptacle : Is it matter or space or both or neither ?”) ; 37-62 (Chapter II : The Three Kinds”).

Miller, Paul Allen, “The Platonic Remainder : Derrida’s Khôra and the Corpus Platonicum,” in Derrida and Antiquity, edited by Miriam Leonard, Oxford University Press, Classical Presences, 2010, 321-341.

Mohr, Richard D. “The Gold Analogy in Plato’s “Timaeus”” (50 a 4-b 5), Phronesis 23, no. 3 (1978) : 243-252. Accessed November 16, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182046. 

Ousterhout, Robert. “The Virgin of the Chora : An Image and Its Context.” In The Sacred Image East and West (Illinois Byzantine Studies), 91 – 104. Champaign, IL : University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Pechriggl, Alice, Chiasmen : Antike Philosophie von Platon zu Sappho – von Sappho zu uns, Bielefeld : transcript Verlag, 2006, (Teil I : “Chaos – Psyche-Soma – Kosmos” : “Chôra”). Plato, Timeaues

Rickert, Thomas Joseph. “Toward the Chōra : Kristeva, Derrida, and Ulmer on Emplaced Invention.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 40, no. 3 (2007) : 251-273. Accessed November 16, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25655276. doi : 10.1353/par.2007.0030.

Sallis, John. “The Place of the Good.” In The Verge of Philosophy, 29-52. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2007. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226734279.001.0001.

Sallis, John. “The Politics of the Χώρα.” In Platonic Legacies (SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy), 27-45. New York, Albany : SUNY Press, 2004.

Sallis, John. Chorology, On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus. Indianapolis : Indiana University Press, 1999.

Sattler, Βarbara. “A Likely Account of Necessity : Plato’s Receptacle as a Physical and Metaphysical Foundation for Space.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 50, no. 2 (2012) : 159-195. doi : 10.1353/hph.2012.0037.

Sullivan, Mary Ann, and Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino. “Chora and Nous : excerpt from Mary Ann Sullivan’s Dissertation : “Digital Poetry and the Greek Notion of Nous”.” The Tower Journal (Published November 28, 2008). Web : http://www.towerjournal.com/chora.html.

Vidler, Anthony, “CHÔRA [χώρα] (GREEK),” in Dictionary of Untranslatables : A Philosophical Lexicon [Vocabulaire européen des philosophies : Dictionnaire des intraduisibles. Éditions de Seuil / Dictionnaires Le Robert, 2004], edited by Barbara Cassin, 131-135. Translation edited by Steven Rendall, Christian Hubert, Jeffrey Mehlman, Nathanael Stein, and Michael Syrotinski. Princeton and Oxford : Princeton University Press, 2014.