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Gillian Rosemary Rose (née Stone; 20 September 1947 – 9 December 1995) was a British philosopher and writer. Rose held the chair of social and political thought at the
University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...
until 1995. Rose began her teaching career at the
University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...
. She worked in the fields of philosophy and sociology. Her writings include ''The Melancholy Science, Hegel Contra Sociology, Dialectic of Nihilism, Mourning Becomes the Law'', and ''Paradiso,'' among others. Notable facets of her work include criticism of
neo-Kantianism In late modern philosophy, neo-Kantianism () was a revival of the 18th-century philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The neo-Kantians sought to develop and clarify Kant's theories, particularly his concept of the thing-in-itself and his moral philosophy ...
,
post-modernism Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wor ...
, and
political theology Political theology is a term which has been used in discussion of the ways in which Theology, theological concepts or ways of thinking relate to politics. The term is often used to denote religious thought about political principled questions. Scho ...
in tandem with what has been described as "a forceful defence of
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...
's speculative thought," largely with the ambition of philosophically substantiating and extending the
critical theory Critical theory is a social, historical, and political school of thought and philosophical perspective which centers on analyzing and challenging systemic power relations in society, arguing that knowledge, truth, and social structures are ...
of
Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
.


Early life and education

Gillian Rose was born in London into a secular
Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...
ish family. Shortly after her parents divorced, when Rose was still quite young, her mother married another man, her stepfather, with whom Rose became close as she drifted from her biological father. These aspects of her family life figured in her late memoir ''Love's Work'' (1995). Also in her memoir, she writes that her "passion for philosophy" was bred at age 17 when she read Pascal's ''
Pensées The (''Thoughts'') is a collection of fragments written by the French 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the was in many ways his life's work. It repre ...
'' and
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
's ''
Republic A republic, based on the Latin phrase ''res publica'' ('public affair' or 'people's affair'), is a State (polity), state in which Power (social and political), political power rests with the public (people), typically through their Representat ...
''. Rose attended Ealing Grammar School and went on to
St Hilda's College, Oxford St Hilda's College (full name = Principal and Council of St. Hilda's College, Oxford) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. The college is named after the Anglo-Saxon saint Hilda of Whitby and was founded in 1893 as a ...
, where she read PPE. Taught philosophy by Jean Austin, widow of the philosopher
J. L. Austin John Langshaw Austin (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was an English philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts. Austin pointed out that we use lan ...
, she later described herself as bristling under the constraints of Oxford-style philosophy. She never forgot Austin remarking in class, "Remember, girls, all the philosophers you will read are much more intelligent than you are." In a late interview, Rose commented of philosophers trained at Oxford, "It teaches them to be clever, destructive, supercilious and ignorant. It doesn't teach you what's important. It doesn't feed the soul." Sociologist
Jean Floud Jean Esther Floud (''née'' McDonald; 3 November 1915 – 28 March 2013) was a prominent educational sociologist and later an academic. She was the Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1972 to 1983. Early life She was born Jean Esther ...
helped keep Rose's passion for philosophy alive in her final year at Oxford. She graduated with upper second-class honours. Before beginning her Doctor of Philosophy at St. Antony's College, Oxford, she studied at
Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
as a Ford Foundation Fellow and at the
Free University, Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period as a Western continu ...
.


Work

Rose's career began with a dissertation on
Theodor W. Adorno Theodor W. Adorno ( ; ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, musicologist, and social theorist. He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has com ...
, supervised by the Polish philosopher
Leszek Kołakowski Leszek Kołakowski (; ; 23 October 1927 – 17 July 2009) was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analysis of Marxism, Marxist thought, as in his three-volume history of Marxist philosophy ''Main Current ...
, who wryly spoke to her of Adorno as a third-rate thinker. This dissertation eventually became the basis for her first book, ''The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno'' (1978). She became well known partly through her critiques of postmodernism and post-structuralism. In ''Dialectic of Nihilism'' (1984), for instance, she leveled criticisms at
Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...
,
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...
, and
Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...
. Later, in her essay "Of Derrida's Spirit" in ''Judaism and Modernity'' (1993), Rose critiqued Derrida's ''Of Spirit'' (1987), arguing that his analysis of Heidegger's relation to Nazism relied in key instances on serious misreadings of Hegel, which allowed both Heidegger and Derrida to evade the importance of political history and modern law. In an extended "Note" to the essay, Rose raised similar objections to Derrida's subsequent readings of
Hermann Cohen Hermann Cohen (; ; 4 July 1842 – 4 April 1918) was a German philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism, and he is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century". Bio ...
and
Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
, singling out his notion of the "mystical foundation of authority" as centrally problematic.
In the early 1990s there was a really interesting intellectual context n England There were people like Gillian Rose, David Wood, Jay Bernstein and Geoff Bennington—there was a very high level of intellectual activity. And really good younger people, like
Howard Caygill Howard Caygill (born 1958) is a British philosopher. He has held the position of Professor of Modern European Philosophy at thCentre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP)Kingston University since 2011. Previously he had taught at ...
, Peter Osborne, Keith Ansell Pearson,
Nick Land Nick Land (born 14 March 1962) is an English philosopher best known for popularising the ideology of accelerationism. His work has been tied to the development of speculative realism, and departs from the formal conventions of academic writing ...
and many others. People were really pushing the envelope, thinking hard about deep issues and the standard was extremely high. --
Simon Critchley Simon Critchley (born 27 February 1960) is an English philosopher and the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City, U.S.A. Biography Critchley was born on 27 February 1960, in Letchworth, Engl ...
, 2010
Her first academic appointment was as a lecturer in sociology in 1974 at the School of European Studies (the
University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...
). In 1989, Rose left Sussex for the
University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...
when a colleague was unexpectedly promoted over her. Inquiring about the promotion with economist Donald Winch, the then pro-vice-chancellor, he told her that her future at the institution was not bright: "He said to me that I was working in a contextual manner and that the future belonged to those whose work was acceptable to the Government, to industry and to the public." Her chair at Warwick in Social and Political Thought was created for her and she was encouraged to bring her funded PhD students with her. She held her position at Warwick until her death in 1995. As part of her thinking into the Holocaust, Rose was engaged by the Polish Commission for the Future of
Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...
in 1990, a delegation which included theologian Richard L. Rubenstein and literary critic David G. Roskies, among others. She wrote about her experience of this commission in her memoir ''Love's Work'' and in ''Mourning Becomes the Law'' and ''Paradiso''. One of her colleagues on the commission, Marc H. Ellis, has written about Rose's experience as well:
At a crucial moment in our deliberations on the historical knowledge of the Polish guides, Rose spoke, out of turn and off the subject, of the nearness of God. This was a violation of etiquette, and worse. Rose was suggesting that the anger of these delegates, for the most part Holocaust scholars and rabbis, was a retrospective one that, paradoxically sought the Holocaust past as a safe haven from inquiries of the present conduct of the Jewish people.


''Love's Work'' (1995)

Rose's memoir, ''Love's Work'', detailing her background, maturation as a philosopher, and years-long battle with ovarian cancer, was a bestseller when it was published in 1995. "She has, hitherto, been a respected, weighty, but lone voice among a specialised readership," wrote Elaine Williams at the time, " utshe has, since her illness, been driven to write philosophy which has created ripples of excitement among a wider critical audience." Marina Warner, writing for the ''London Review of Books'', said " 'Love's Work''provokes, inspires and illuminates more profoundly than many a bulky volume, and confronts the great subjects...and it delivers what its title promises, a new allegory about love." In a review in ''The New York Times'', upon the publication of the U.S. edition of the book,
Daniel Mendelsohn Daniel Adam Mendelsohn (born 1960) is an American author, essayist, critic, columnist, and translator. He is currently the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard College, the Editor at Large of the '' New York Review of Books,'' ...
wrote, "'Love's Work' is a raw but always artfully wrought confrontation with the 'deeper levels of the terrors of the soul'" ''Love's Work'' was re-published by NYRB Books in 2011, in the NYRB Classics series, with an introduction by friend and literary critic Michael Wood and including a poem by
Geoffrey Hill Sir Geoffrey William Hill, Royal_Society_of_Literature#Fellowship, FRSL (18 June 1932 – 30 June 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston Uni ...
, which he had dedicated to her. In a review of the re-publication, in ''The Guardian'', Nicholas Lezard commented, "I struggle to think of a finer, more rewarding short autobiography than this." In 2024, Penguin re-published ''Love's Work'' in the Penguin Modern Classics series.


Philosophy


''The Melancholy Science'' (1978)

Rose's first book, ''The Melancholy Science'', is a text that shows Adorno's most significant contribution to the sociology of culture is a Marxist aesthetic. Rose traces Adorno's Marxist critique of philosophy through the works of various philosophers such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger and essays on Kafka, Mann, Beckett, Brecht and Schönberg. She posits that Adorno offers a ‘sociology of illusion’ that rivals structural Marxism as well as phenomenological sociology and that of the Frankfurt School. In 2014, ''The Melancholy Science'' was republished by
Verso Books Verso Books (formerly New Left Books) is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of ''New Left Review'' (NLR) and includes Tariq Ali and Perry Anderson on its board of directors. According to its webs ...
.


''Hegel Contra Sociology'' (1981)

Her second book, ''Hegel Contra Sociology,'' argues that all the major sociological traditions derive from neo-Kantian philosophy and fail to grasp the radical significance of Hegel's critique of Kant. The book sets out Rose's understanding of Hegel, in particular her view that Hegel's is a 'speculative' rather than a 'dialectical' philosophy. Speculative philosophy is concerned with non-identity as much as identity and in this way Hegel was able to pre-empt and disarm many of the charges (not least Popper's charge of justifying totalitarianism) leveled at him. The book has twice been republished: first, in 1995, with a new preface, by Athlone Press, the original publisher; and then in 2009, by Verso Books.


''Dialectic of Nihilism'' (1984)

Rose's third book, ''Dialectic of Nihilism'', is a reading of
post-structuralism Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and poli ...
through the lens of law. Specifically, she attempts to read a number of thinkers preceding and constituting post-structuralist philosophy against Kant's "defense of the 'usurpatory concept' of freedom", that is, his answer to the question of "How
eason Eason is a surname of English and Scottish origin. In the case of English, it may be a variant of Eastham (disambiguation), Eastham or Easton (surname), Easton; in the case of Scottish, it is a variant of Esson (disambiguation), Esson. A variant of ...
is to justify its possession" of freedom "through ''pure'' reason, systematically arranged." Rose's primary foci are Martin Heidegger, to whom she devotes three chapters, and Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, to whom she devotes one chapter apiece. In addition, however, she scrutinises a few of the neo-Kantians ( Emil Lask, Rudolf Stammler, and
Hermann Cohen Hermann Cohen (; ; 4 July 1842 – 4 April 1918) was a German philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism, and he is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century". Bio ...
),
Henri Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; ; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the S ...
, and
Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand Mongin de Saussure (; ; 26 November 185722 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is wi ...
and
Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss ( ; ; 28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a Belgian-born French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theories of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair o ...
. Her central argument is that with the post-structuralists a "newly insinuated law sdissembled as a nihilistic break with knowledge and law, with tradition in general." Describing this situation in the case of Foucault, Rose writes, "like all nihilist programmes, this one insinuates a new law disguised as beyond politics." Concomitantly, Rose contends that similar fates befall the neo-Kantians and other thinkers who try to transcend or ignore the problems of law. According to Rose, the neo-Kantians seek to resolve the Kantian antinomy of law "by drawing an 'original' category out of the ''
Critique of Pure Reason The ''Critique of Pure Reason'' (; 1781; second edition 1787) is a book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in which the author seeks to determine the limits and scope of metaphysics. Also referred to as Kant's "First Critique", it was foll ...
'', be it 'mathesis', 'time', or 'power'", yet remain unable to do so because " is mode of resolution ... depends on changing the old sticking point of the unknown categorical imperative into a new vanishing point, where it remains equally categorical and imperative, unknowable but forceful"; while other thinkers—including Lévi-Strauss and Henri Bergson—"fall into the familiar transcendental problem" wherein the "ambiguity in the relation between the conditioned and the precondition is exploited." The philosopher
Howard Caygill Howard Caygill (born 1958) is a British philosopher. He has held the position of Professor of Modern European Philosophy at thCentre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP)Kingston University since 2011. Previously he had taught at ...
—also Rose's literary executor—has taken issue with her readings of Deleuze and Derrida in ''Dialectic of Nihilism'', going so far as to call some of them "frankly tendentious". In a more critical review of the book, Roy Boyne, too, argues that Rose failed to do justice to these figures. "She operates on the highest plane of abstraction", Boyne writes, "for it is only at that level that the polemic makes any sense. Were she to drop down a level or so, she would see that the position she is so concerned to defend is not under attack from the quarters to which she addresses herself." However, Caygill insists that "Whatever the shortcomings of the readings in ''Dialectic of Nihilism'' and the unfortunate and unnecessary borders it raised between Rose's thought and that of many of her contemporaries, it did mark a further stage in her retrieval of speculative thought." Scott Lash has asserted that the "real weakness of ''Dialectic of Nihilism'' is its propensity toward academic point-scoring", the result of which, according to Lash, is Rose's "devoting some half of its length attempting to discredit the analysts under consideration with their own assumptions, rather than straightforwardly confronting them with her own juridical prescriptions." Yet Lash considers her chapters on Derrida and Foucault to be partial remedies to this issue.


''The Broken Middle'' (1992)

Begun in early 1986, ''The Broken Middle: Out of Our Ancient Society'' was Rose's fourth book and it is considered by some her magnum opus. In his review,
John Milbank Alasdair John Milbank (born 23 October 1952) is an English Anglo-Catholic theologian and is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he is President of the Centre of Theolo ...
wrote, "this book is one of the most important written by a British philosopher and social theorist in recent times."


''Judaism and Modernity'' (1993)

''Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays'', her fifth book, is a collection of essays in which Rose tries to work out the relationship between philosophy and Judaism. Her aim is to explain how and why philosophers turned to Jews and Judaism to evade the dilemmas of modern philosophy, and how and why religious thinkers turned to the same source to evade the dilemmas of a modern faith confronted by the demands of philosophy. In 2017, like ''The Melancholy Science'' and ''Hegel contra Sociology'', ''Judaism and Modernity'' was brought back into print by Verso Books.


''Mourning Becomes the Law'' (1996)

Rose's last expressly philosophical work, ''Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation'' was a posthumous collection of essays. In the book's thematically connected essays, Rose deals with a range of topics, from modern philosophy's melancholic attachments to the failures of the politics of authority and representation. ''Mourning Becomes the Law'' is the most personal of Rose's primarily philosophical texts, interweaving autobiographical reflections with rigorous analysis.


Influence

Already in 1995,
Rowan Williams Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth (born 14 June 1950) is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet, who served as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012. Previously the Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of W ...
commented, "Gillian Rose's work has had far less discussion than it merits." In the decades following Williams' statement others have reiterated the sentiment. Indeed, scholar of religion Vincent Lloyd comments: Nevertheless, Rose's work has made more explicit inroads among a number of important thinkers, not the least of them Williams, whose revaluation of Hegel in the 1990s has been attributed to Rose's influence. On the philosophy of Hegel, in a text of 1991,
Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek ( ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, Global Distin ...
writes, "one has to grasp the fundamental paradox of the ''speculative identity'' as it was recently identified by Gillian Rose." Žižek here refers to Rose's second book ''Hegel contra Sociology'' (1981); subsequently, his Hegelianism was dubbed "speculative" by Marcus Pound. In turn, Howard Caygill observes of ''Hegel contra Sociology'': "This work revolutionized the study of Hegel, providing a comprehensive account of his speculative philosophy that overcame the distinction between religious ('right Hegelian') and political ('left Hegelian') interpretations that had prevailed since the death of the philosopher in 1832." And the work is still cited in Hegel scholarship. Two of Rose's students,
Paul Gilroy Paul Gilroy (born 16 February 1956) is an English sociologist and cultural studies scholar who is the founding Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Race and Racism at University College London (UCL). Gilroy is the 2019 ...
and David Marriott, have emerged as key thinkers of critical race theory and have acknowledged her influence. When
John Milbank Alasdair John Milbank (born 23 October 1952) is an English Anglo-Catholic theologian and is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham, where he is President of the Centre of Theolo ...
published ''Theology and Social Theory'' in 1990, he cited Rose as one of the thinkers without whom "the present book would not have been conceivable." Marcus Pound recently found that "Rose was the Blackwell reader for Milbank's ''Theology and Social Theory''. The Rose archives at Warwick include the letters Milbank and Rose exchanged on the subject. In particular she pushed him to clarify the nature of the subject which underpinned ''Theology and Social Theory''. In response Milbank wrote 'The Sublime in Kierkegaard'." Although Rose's influence is strongest in Europe, she maintained important US ties from her Columbia days onward. American philosopher Jay Bernstein was a close friend and colleague; the two read all of each other's works in draft. Bernstein eulogized Rose in ''The Guardian''. Near the end of her life, Rose was in a sustained dialogue with American philosopher
Stanley Cavell Stanley Louis Cavell (; September 1, 1926 – June 19, 2018) was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, ...
about Hegel and Kierkegaard.


Legacy

Two special issues on Gillian Rose have appeared from scholarly journals. The first, "The Work of Gillian Rose," appeared in 1998 in volume 9, issue 1 of the journal ''Women: A Cultural Review''. It contained contributions from students and friends, including Laura Marcus, Howard Caygill, and Nigel Tubbs, as well as an edited transcription of "two W. H. Smith exercise books containing the notes and observations that osehad been writing...until shortly before her death" in hospital. An essay by literary critic Isobel Armstrong, which appeared alongside but not as a part of the special issue, turns on Rose's concept of "the broken middle" and presents a careful and appreciative reading of her work. In 2015 the journal ''Telos'' released a special issue on Rose, gathering responses and critiques to her work from Rowan Williams, John Milbank, Peter Osborne, and Nigel Tubbs. In 2019, The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London established an annual Gillian Rose Memorial Lecture. The inaugural speaker was professor of philosophy and comparative literature Rebecca Comay.


Archives

Rose's papers are held by Warwick University Library in the Modern Records Centre.


Death

Rose was diagnosed with
ovarian cancer Ovarian cancer is a cancerous tumor of an ovary. It may originate from the ovary itself or more commonly from communicating nearby structures such as fallopian tubes or the inner lining of the abdomen. The ovary is made up of three different ...
in 1993. She died in
Coventry Coventry ( or rarely ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands county, in England, on the River Sherbourne. Coventry had been a large settlement for centurie ...
at the age of 48.Wolf, Arnold Jacob (1997). "The Tragedy of Gillian Rose." ''Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought'' 46, no. 184. She made a
deathbed conversion A deathbed conversion is the adoption of a particular religious faith shortly before dying. Making a Religious conversion, conversion on one's :wikt:deathbed, deathbed may reflect an immediate change of belief, a desire to formalize longer-ter ...
to Christianity through the
Anglican Church Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
. (Andrew Shanks notes that "there is evidence, among the papers left behind from her final illness, that at one point oseseriously considered the alternative of Roman Catholicism."Shanks, Andrew (2008). ''Against Innocence: Gillian Rose's Reception and Gift of Faith''. SCM Press. p. 178, note 8.) She left to the library of Warwick University parts of her own personal library, including a collection of essential works on the History of Christianity and Theology, which are marked "From the Library of Professor Gillian Rose, 1995" on the inside cover. Rose is survived by her parents, her sister, the academic and writer
Jacqueline Rose Jacqueline Rose (born 1949) is a British academic who is Professor of Humanities at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. She is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. Life and work Rose ...
, her half sisters, Alison Rose and Diana Stone, and her half brother, Anthony Stone.


Works


Dissertation

*"Reification as a Sociological Theodor W. Adorno's Concept of Reification and the Possibility of a Critical Theory of Society," University of Oxford (1976)


Books

*''The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno'' (1978) *''Hegel contra Sociology'' (1981) *''Dialectic of Nihilism: Post-Structuralism and Law'' (1984) *''The Broken Middle: Out of Our Ancient Society'' (1992) *''Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays'' (1993) *''Love's Work: A Reckoning With Life'' (1995) *''Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation'' (1996) *''Paradiso'' (1999) *''Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Literary Theory'' (Verso, 2024)


Essays, articles and reviews

*"How Is Critical Theory Possible? Theodor W. Adorno and Concept Formation in Sociology," ''Political Studies'' 24.1 (March 1976), 69–85. *Review of Theodor W. Adorno, ''Negative Dialectics'', in ''The American Political Science Review'' 7.2 (June 1976), 598–9. *Review of Susan Buck-Morss, ''The Origin of Negative Dialectics'' and Zolton Tar, ''The Frankfurt School'', in ''History and Theory'' 18.1 (February 1979), 126–135. *Review of Thomas McCarthy, ''The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas'', in ''British Journal of Sociology'' 31.1 (March 1980), 110–1. *"A ghost in his own machine", review of '' Points...: Interviews, 1974–1994'' and '' Spectres of Marx'' by Jacques Derrida. ''The Times'' 27 July 1995. *"The Final Notebooks of Gillian Rose", ''Women: A Cultural Review'' 9:1 (1998), 6–18, edited by Howard Caygill. *"Beginnings of the Day: Fascism and Representation", paper in ''Modernism, Culture and 'the Jew' '' (1998) he book is dedicated to Rose


Unpublished writings

*"Italian Journey" (uploaded to www.gillianrose.org) *"Your Visit to Auschwitz" (uploaded to www.gillianrose.org)


Notes


Further reading

* Avrahami, Einat, "Illness as Life Affair in Gillian Rose's ''Love's Work''", chap. 1 of ''The Invading Body: Reading Illness Autobiographies'' (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007). * Bernstein, Jay, "Philosophy Among the Ruins", '' Prospect'' 6 (1996), 27–30. * Brower Latz, Andrew, ''The Social Philosophy of Gillian Rose'' (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2018). * Caygill, Howard, "The Broken Hegel: Gillian Rose's retrieval of speculative philosophy", ''Women: A Cultural Review'' 9.1 (1998), 19–27. * Caygill, Howard, "Gillian Rose 1947–1995: Art, Justice and Metaphysics" in ''Force and Understanding: Writings on Philosophy and Resistance''. (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 19–26. * Davis, Joshua B., ed. ''Misrecognitions: Gillian Rose and the Task of Political Theology'' (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2018). * Jarvis, Simon, "Idle Tears: A Response to Gillian Rose" in ''Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Reappraisal'' (edited by Gary K. Browning, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), 113–9. * Kavka, Martin, "Saying Kaddish for Gillian Rose, or on Levinas and ''Geltungsphilosophie''" in ''Secular Theology: American Radical Theological Thought'' (edited by Clayton Crockett, London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 104–129. * Lloyd, Vincent, ''Law and Transcendence: On the Unfinished Project of Gillian Rose'' (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). * Lloyd, Vincent, "The Race of the Soul: On Gillian Rose" in ''Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology''. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018), 216–32. * Lloyd, Vincent, "On the Use of Gillian Rose", ''The Heythrop Journal'' 48.5 (2007), 697–706. * Rose, Jacqueline "On Gillian Rose" in ''The Last Resistance'' (London: Verso, 2007). * Schick, Kate, ''Gillian Rose: A Good Enough Justice'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2012). * Shanks, Andrew, ''Against Innocence: Gillian Rose's Reception and Gift of Faith'' (London: SCM Press, 2008). * Tubbs, Nigel, ''Contradiction of Enlightenment: Hegel and the Broken Middle'' (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997). * Williams, Rowan D. "Between Politics and Metaphysics: Reflections in the Wake of Gillian Rose", ''Modern Theology'' 11.1 (1995), 3–22.


External links


Catalogue of Rose's papers
held at the
Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick The Modern Records Centre (MRC) is the specialist archive service of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, located adjacent to the Central Campus Library. It was established in October 1973 and holds the world's largest archive collect ...
*Dr. Anna Rowlands'
2018 video-lecture on Gillian Rose
for the St. John's Timeline series
"Obituary from ''Radical Philosophy" by Howard Caygill"Mind the Gap: The Philosophy of Gillian Rose" by Nigel TubbsSermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Christmas Day 1996Harrison Fluss, "The Spiritual Animal Kingdom: On Gillian Roses Hegelian Critique of Bourgeois Society" 2011
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rose, Gillian 1947 births 1995 deaths 20th-century British non-fiction writers 20th-century British philosophers Alumni of St Antony's College, Oxford British women academics British women philosophers Hegelian philosophers British women sociologists Alumni of St Hilda's College, Oxford English Anglicans Academics of the University of Sussex Academics of the University of Warwick Deaths from ovarian cancer in England 20th-century English historians