Enigmas: Essays on Sarah Kofman [Hardcover]

Penelope Deutscher (Editor), Kelly Oliver (Editor), Jean-Luc Nancy (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1999

The work of the distinguished philosopher Sarah Kofman has, since her tragic death in 1994, become a focus for many scholars interested in contemporary French philosophy. The first critical collection on her thought to appear in English, Enigmas evaluates Kofman's most important contributions to philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, feminism, and literary theory. These insightful essays range from analyses of Kofman's first book, L'Enfance de l'art (1970), to her last, L'Imposture de la beaut (1995).

This unique volume represents the major themes in Kofman's scholarship: literature and aesthetics; philosophy and metaphor; women, feminism, and psychoanalysis; and Jews and German nationalism. Selected essays explore and diagnose Kofman's personal struggles as they are reflected in her writing.

Contributors Natalie Alexander, Truman State University Tina Chanter, Memphis State University Penelope Deutscher, Australian National University Franoise Duroux, Universit de Paris Pierre Lamarche, University of Texas, Austin Duncan Large, University College of Swansea, United Kingdom Mary Beth Mader, University of Texas, Austin Diane Morgan, Nene College of Higher Education, United Kingdom Jean-Luc Nancy, Universit des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg, France Kelly Oliver, University of Texas at Austin Paul Patton, University of Sydney, Australia Alan Schrift, Grinnell College Ann Smock, University of California, Berkeley

Product Details

• Hardcover: 284 pages
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr (February 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801429129
• ISBN-13: 978-0801429125
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,300,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kelly Oliver was born on July 28, 1958 in Spokane Washington. She graduated from Gonzaga University with honors in 1979 with a double major in philosophy and communications. She earned her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in philosophy in 1987. She has held teaching positions at various Universities, including George Washington University, University of Texas at Austin, and Stony Brook University. Currently, she is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

She has published 19 books on topics ranging from family, love, war, and violence to affirmative action, Hollywood films, and animal rights.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of triangulation; also uncanny, June 29, 2006

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Enigmas: Essays on Sarah Kofman (Paperback)

I had been curious about this book for a long time because one of the editors is Kelly Oliver, who wrote the book WOMANIZING NIETZSCHE, which was published in 1995. The Introduction (pp. 1-22) of ENIGMAS is jointly written by Penelope Deutscher and Kelly Oliver, but Chapter 10, Sarah Kofman's Queasy Stomach and the Riddle of the Paternal Law, is attributed solely to Kelly Oliver. Chapter 1 is a translation by Duncan Large of the first chapter of a book (1995) by Sarah Kofman:

The Imposture of Beauty: The Uncanniness of Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. (pp. 25-48).

I was tremndously impressed by Chapter 2 by Ann Smock:

Don Giovanni, or the Art of Disappointing One's Admirers. (pp. 49-66).

It is so complicated: Sarah Kofman wrote an essay on Molière's `Dom Juan' in which the protagonist, Frédéric Molieri, singing the title role in Mozart's famous opera, is "breathtakingly irreverent where obligations and accountability are concerned. He won't, as Sarah Kofman emphasizes, consider himself bound by any engagement at all, and this is because he is in permanent rebellion against the derisory conception, constantly pressed upon him, of life as a loan and of God as the supreme banker, who prudently keeps track of everything he gives lest he forget to collect all that's due him in the end. Such a calculating God could only be taken seriously by people who are equally vulgar. Sarah Kofman stresses this with relish." (pp. 49-50).

Chapter 3, by Duncan Large, quotes Sarah Kofman on the intellectual triangulation which her philosophy thrived on:

Freud and Nietzsche, these two rival "geniuses" whom I have always needed to keep together so that neither of them could ultimately win out over the other or over "me": continually playing with the one and the other, and playing the one off against the other, within "myself," I prevent each from gaining mastery (reading Freud, I read him with a third, Nietzschean ear; reading Nietzsche, I understand him ["je l'entends"] with my fourth, Freudian ear). (p. 68).