Women in Dark Times

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Women in Dark Timesbegins with three remarkable women: revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg; German-Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon; and film icon Marilyn Monroe. Bound togetherby their struggles against iniquity and blazing a trail across some of the defining features of the twentieth century - revolution, totalitarianism and the American dream - these women's stories compel us to reckon with the unspeakable. Bringing to the surface the subterranean depths of history and the human mind that dominant political vocabularies cannot bear to face, pioneering critic and psychoanalyst Jacqueline Rose forges a new language for feminism. Extending her argument into the present, Rose grapples with 'honour' killings and celebrates contemporary artists whose work grows out of an unflinching engagement with all that is darkest in the modern world.Women in Dark Timescalls onusto enter the landscape of the night, confronting the public and private pain of these defiant, visionary women to embrace a scandalous feminism and struggle for the political futures we want to build.

Reviews

A surfeit of elegance and intelligence.
Ali Smith

A rigorously argued and at times breathtaking book. Many paragraphs contain a controlled explosion; her analysis of mens fear of and fascination with female sexuality, born from the boys early proximity to the mothers body, is one of them. The book closes with a clarion cry: Women have been reasonable for far too. Her reasoning, ironically, is as tight and sinuous as a constrictor knot. It is a time to be afraid of the dark.
Frances Wilson,Telegraph

Rose confronts dark times with dark and moving stories from the last century inspiring a new feminism for this one. By so doing she keeps alive the dreams of so many women from Rosa Luxemburg and Marilyn Monroe to young girls killed in the name of some perverted sense of honour. Most likely a classic.
Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty

Its really hard for me to overestimate how important [Roses] work has been for me... I dont feel like that about very many writers.
Maggie Nelson

Jacqueline Rose has no peer among critics of her generation. The brilliance of her literary insight, the lucidity of her prose, and the subtlety of her analyses are simply breathtaking.
Edward Said

One of the most original and intellectually sophisticated minds at work today.
Eimear McBride

To read Rose is to understand that there is no border between us and the world; it is an invitation to a radical kind of responsibility.
Parul Sehgal,New York Times

As a literary scholar and psychoanalytic thinker, Rose has long insisted that we pay close attention to the subterranean fears, fantasies, and narratives that structure our most pressing sociopolitical problems.
Merve Emre,The Nation

Author Bio

Jacqueline Rose is internationally recognised as one of the most important living feminist and cultural critics. She is the co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, a co-founder of Independent Jewish Voices, and a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Literary Society. Rose is a frequent contributor to theLondon Review of Booksand theGuardian, among many other publications. Her books includeSexuality in the Field of Vision,The Haunting of Sylvia Plath,States of Fantasy,Women in Dark Times,Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, andOn Violence and On Violence Against Women.