Gillian Rose
Today marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of Gillian Rose, philosopher, scholar and teacher. She is much missed by all whom she graced.
London Consortium is holding a special conference today to discuss the legacy and impact of her life’s thought. Unfortunately, there is not much substantial material on the web that deals with her writings. I encourage everyone to sign up on the Wikipedia site to help build a page on Gillian Rose.
There is even less audio material. I don’t recall many of her students taping her infrequent lectures, but I have found a pair of interviews that Gillian did with RTE, an Irish radio station, shortly before her death. Click here to access the (Dialogue) programme’s page then scroll down and click on the relevant dates (April 9th and 16th).
3 Comments
I studied under Professor Rose at Warwick, I’m very sorry I missed the conference. Would very much like to get in touch with anyone who knew her.
Alec, re. your request, I guess this is as good a place to start. I was at Warwick from 1989 to 1992 (BA) and also 1994-95 (MA). The undergraduate critical theory classes were quite a treat: often, the seminars were ghostly silent, as confused Sociology undergrads tried to make sense of works by H. v. Kleist and Hegel – while Gillian (I’m sure) took some pleasure in our reasoning discomfort.
My friend at Smokewriting has posted an excellent commentary on the Conference. He was also a student of Gillian’s. Others include Nigel Tubbs, who has written a book on her thought and works. I also seem to remember that Kyriaki Goudeli was one of her students as well; she has written a book entitled Challenges to German Idealism: Schelling, Fichte and Kant.
One of the more bizarre things I’ve seen about the influence of Prof. Rose’s work is found in Richard Hull’s writings on business management. He also runs a course on “The Social Theory and Philosophy of Gillian Rose”.
I came to know Rose only very recently through Barbara Galli, the translator of Franz Rosenzweig’s “Kleinere Schriften”; and my acquaintance with her radically expanded what I understood to be the critique of modernity… much more than Barbara Hahn or George Steiner, that are also figures of our generation. Nonetheless she seems to be in the oblivion among academic circles, particularly people dealing with German thought know hardly anything about her, perhaps out of considering him too outsider.
I’ve been trying to contact her former students but although they’re listed online as academic people their addy’s aren’t available. I’ve just recently told my circle of friends that everyone should read Gillian Rose, it’s really the core of what critical studies should be like. I’m acquainted with Paul Mendes-Flohr that knew her from her early days, so I should try to exact as much information as possible from him. People should definitely start writing about her, there’s absolutely nothing online than what was previously mentioned. I’m working on a couple of blog postings from “Judaism & Modernity” but it’ll take me sometime as I’m very engaged with Kafka at the moment. I think we should open a blog and have people posting anything about Gillian.
I’ve worked on Hannah Arendt for a long time now, and it always startled me how little there was available online, even though there’s a large Arendt community among philosophers, politologists and people in women’s studies, Jewish studies and comparative literature. In the age of Arendt’s popularity nearing her centennial celebration very few people know about Rose, whose criticism of people like Levinas and Fackenheim must be taken very seriously, must be brought upfront. The case of Rose is dramatic, because there’s absolutely nothing. No Rose scholarship, working groups, reading lists, discussions, etc. It’s a silent love affair. If there’s anyone interested in blogging about Rose or even having an international working group I could provide an institutional frame for that in Jerusalem and Kassel, perhaps even holding an annual meeting. I’ll also speak to Mendes-Flohr about it in the Rosenzweig Centre in Jerusalem, but of course these things can’t be done if there’s no one interested.
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