Mourning Becomes the Law
Philosophy and Representation

Schindler's List, Poussin's painting, the Holocaust, justice, the soul, AIDS: post-modernism debunked.

Gillian Rose (Author)

9780521578493, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 12 September 1996

172 pages, 6 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 1 cm, 0.23 kg

"This is a wonderful book that manages that rare feat of combining high levels of both passion and rigour. I highly recommend it." David Sherman, Dialogue

In Mourning Becomes the Law, Gillian Rose takes us beyond the impasse of post-modernism or 'despairing rationalism withour reason'. Arguing that the post-modern search for a 'new ethics' and ironic philosophy are incoherent, she breathes new life into the debates concerning power and domination, transcendence and eternity. Mourning Becomes the Law is the philosophical counterpart to Gillian Rose's highly acclaimed memoir Love's Work. She extends similar clarity and insight to discussions of architecture, cinema, painting and poetry, through which relations between the formation of the individual and the theory of justice are connected. At the heart of this reconnection lies a reflection on the significance of the Holocaust and Judaism. Mourning Becomes the Law reinvents the classical analogy of the soul, the city and the sacred. It returns philosophy, Nietzsche's 'bestowing virtue', to the pulse of our intellectual and political culture.

Introduction
1. Athens and Jerusalem: a tale of three cities
2. Beginnings of the day: Fascism and representation
3. The comedy of Hegel and the Trauerspiel of modern philosophy
4. 'Would that they would forsake Me but observe my Torah': Midrash and political authority
5. Potter's Field: death worked and unworked
6. O! Untimely death/death.

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]