Emili Du Châtelet – on Matter

Abstract

This paper draws on Emily du Châtelet, an early 18th Century philosopher’s life and work to reflect on posthuman feminist theory’s redefinition of the historical feminist project away from emancipatory, dialectical epistemologies in relation to science. In her 1740 published book, Institution de Physics (Foundations of Physics), du Châtelet, in an enlightenment fashion turns to empiricism in an attempt to explain the physical world and specifically bodily agency. It is empiricism that leads her to critic both the Cartesians as well as the Newtonians disembodied account of force. Turning to Leibniz’s metaphysics, du Châtelet critiques Newton’s theory of bodies and gravity and in its place suggests a vital, agential approach to matter. Having an insight into her intellectual world at the dawn of enlightenment renders the lacuna of our scientific paradigm to account for bodies as a nonlogical one and affirms technoscience/ posthuman feminist transformative project.