One of our leading thinkers forges a new language for feminism, weaving together stories of visionary women past and present, and their paths of defiance. A decade on from its first publication, Jacqueline Rose's Women in Dark Times is as urgent and compelling as ever.

Women in Dark Times begins with three remarkable women: revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg; German-Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon; and film icon Marilyn Monroe. The story of these women, bound together by their struggles against iniquity, blazes a trail across some of the defining features of the twentieth century - revolution, totalitarianism and the American dream - and compels 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 public intellectual Jacqueline Rose forges a new language for feminism. Extending her argument into the present, Rose turns her focus to '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 Times, reissued a decade after its original publication, offers a template for a scandalous feminism, one which confronts all that is most recalcitrant and unsettling in the struggle to create a better world.

Details

ISBN13: 9781804271711
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 416
Edition:
Publication Date: 01 Jul 2025
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.7(H)x12.5(L)
Weight (gm):

Author Biography

Jacqueline Rose is internationally recognized 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 the London Review of Books and the Guardian, among many other publications. Her books include Sexuality in the Field of Vision, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, States of Fantasy, Women in Dark Times, Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, On Violence and On Violence Against Women and, also published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, The Plague: Living Death in Our Times.

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 men’s fear of and fascination with female sexuality, born from the boy’s early proximity to the mother’s 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

‘The kind of restless and confrontational thinking of Women in Dark Times’s feminism is essential, yet it is up against a vast apparatus of material power opposed to letting it take root. For all its interest in the darkness of our minds, the feminism of Women in Dark Times seems profoundly hopeful and generative, always leaving the gap between who a person is and who they can be. Transformation is always possible…. It may be easy to deem the exploration of one’s inner life as privileged navel-gazing, but Rose’s scandalous feminism takes that as a basis to create a new world: one that puts our vulnerability at its very core.’
— Rebecca Liu, ArtReview

‘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

‘It’s really hard for me to overestimate how important [Rose’s] work has been for me... I don’t 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