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We are still coming to terms with the controversial figure of Hannah Arendt. Interlacing her life and work, this book is an elegant, sophisticated biography brimming with historical and philosophical insight.
Focusing on the theme of female genius, Julia Kristeva emphasizes three features of the philosopher’s work. First, by exploring Arendt’s critique of Saint Augustine and her biographical essay on Rahel Varnhagen, Kristeva accentuates Arendt’s commitment to recounting lives and narration. Second, Kristeva reflects on Arendt’s perspective on Judaism, anti-Semitism, and the “banality of evil.” Finally, the biography assesses Arendt’s intellectual journey, placing her enthusiasm for observing both social phenomena and political events in the context of her personal life.
Drawing on fragments of Arendt’s correspondence with her longtime lover Martin Heidegger and her husband Heinrich Blucher, excerpts from her mother’s “Unser Kind” (a diary tracking Hannah’s formative years), and passages from Arendt’s philosophical writings, Kristeva presents a luminous account of an essential thinker.
Kristeva’s reading here is deft and sophisticated: By tacking back and forth between life and writing, she succeeds in illuminating both.
An elegant, sophisticated biography replete with powerful psychoanalytic insight.
Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 “for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature.”
Ross Guberman has translated several works by Julia Kristeva, including Melanie Klein.
Translator’s Acknowledgment
Female Genius: General Introduction
1. Life as a Narrative
2. Superfluous Humanity
3. Thinking, Willing, and Judging
Notes
Bibliography
Index