Despite Plato: A Question of "Rewriting"

“Despite” - a reading of Plato by Adriana Cavarero, notably In Spite of Plato: A Feminist rewriting of Ancient Philosophy, Polity Press, 1995 (1990). I am perhaps not the first to notice, but interestingly the Italian original title does not inform anything of the “rewriting” ascribed in the English translation. The original reads Nonostante Platone: Figure femminili nella filosofia antica, which, as I understand it, simply promises to treat “feminine figures in antique philosophy” – those eventually “despite” (nonostante) Plato. The emphasis of the English transliteration on “rewriting” almost suggests a project similar to and intolerable as the Stalinist rewriting of history. (Cf. Amy Knight, ‘Beria and the Cult of Stalin: Rewriting Transcaucasian Party History’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 43, No. 4, 1991, pp. 749-763.) As Derrida writes, Western philosophy is phallogocentric (Cf. Derrida, La dissemination). The Socratic dilemma of philosophy’s written or spoken for example in the Pheadrus 274a-276b implies, in my view, that “rewriting”, feminist or any other, is still a phallogocentric activity. "Rewriting" reassures the writing it opposes since any writing is phallogocentric. I doubt however that the nonostante of Cavarero entangles any “rewriting” but certainly a feminist reading of ancient philosophy.