Sarah Kofman
Encyclopedia
Sarah Kofman was a French
philosopher, born in Paris
.
Kofman began her teaching career in Toulouse
in 1960, and worked with both Jean Hyppolite
and Gilles Deleuze
. Her primary thesis, later published as Nietzsche et la métaphore, was supervised by Deleuze. In 1969 Kofman met Jacques Derrida
and began attending his seminars at the Ecole Normale Supérieure
. Kofman did not receive tenure until 1991, when she was appointed to a chair at the Sorbonne
.
Kofman was the author of numerous books, including several on Friedrich Nietzsche
and Sigmund Freud
. Her book, L'énigme de la femme: La femme dans les textes de Freud (1980), is perhaps the most thorough consideration of Freud's ideas concerning female sexuality
.
, whom she saw for the last time on July 16, 1942, and who was killed at Auschwitz.
Rue Ordener, rue Labat (1994) also opens with the removal of her father by the Vichy
police, and describes what Kofman understands to have been his fate. The title refers to two Parisian streets: the address at which her family lived until her father's arrest; and the address at which she was sheltered for much of the remainder of the war. Kofman was taken in by a Parisian divorcée who became her surrogate mother and whom she called Mémé. The book tells the story of this period, and of the custody dispute between Mémé and Kofman's mother following the liberation of Paris
.
in 1994. The fact that she did so on the date of Nietzsche's 150th birthday has been seen by some writers as significant. After her death, Jacques Derrida wrote the following:
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
philosopher, born in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Kofman began her teaching career in Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
in 1960, and worked with both Jean Hyppolite
Jean Hyppolite
Jean Hyppolite was a French philosopher known for championing the work of Hegel, and other German philosophers, and educating some of France's most prominent post-war thinkers....
and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
. Her primary thesis, later published as Nietzsche et la métaphore, was supervised by Deleuze. In 1969 Kofman met Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
and began attending his seminars at the Ecole Normale Supérieure
École Normale Supérieure
The École normale supérieure is one of the most prestigious French grandes écoles...
. Kofman did not receive tenure until 1991, when she was appointed to a chair at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
.
Kofman was the author of numerous books, including several on Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
and Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
. Her book, L'énigme de la femme: La femme dans les textes de Freud (1980), is perhaps the most thorough consideration of Freud's ideas concerning female sexuality
Human female sexuality
Human female sexuality encompasses a broad range of behaviors and processes, including female sexual identity and sexual behavior, the physiological, psychological, social, cultural, political, and spiritual or religious aspects of sex...
.
Writings
Though many of her philosophical writings focused on Nietzsche and Freud, Kofman wrote several works in an autobiographical vein. Paroles suffoquées (1987) is dedicated to the memory of her father, rabbi Bereck KofmanBereck Kofman
Bereck Kofman was a French Hasidic orthodox rabbi, independent from the consistory, born in Poland, deported and murdered in Auschwitz....
, whom she saw for the last time on July 16, 1942, and who was killed at Auschwitz.
Rue Ordener, rue Labat (1994) also opens with the removal of her father by the Vichy
Vichy
Vichy is a commune in the department of Allier in Auvergne in central France. It belongs to the historic province of Bourbonnais.It is known as a spa and resort town and was the de facto capital of Vichy France during the World War II Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1944.The town's inhabitants...
police, and describes what Kofman understands to have been his fate. The title refers to two Parisian streets: the address at which her family lived until her father's arrest; and the address at which she was sheltered for much of the remainder of the war. Kofman was taken in by a Parisian divorcée who became her surrogate mother and whom she called Mémé. The book tells the story of this period, and of the custody dispute between Mémé and Kofman's mother following the liberation of Paris
Liberation of Paris
The Liberation of Paris took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the surrender of the occupying German garrison on August 25th. It could be regarded by some as the last battle in the Battle for Normandy, though that really ended with the crushing of the Wehrmacht forces between the...
.
Death
Kofman committed suicideSuicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
in 1994. The fact that she did so on the date of Nietzsche's 150th birthday has been seen by some writers as significant. After her death, Jacques Derrida wrote the following:
| For she too was without pity, if not without mercy, in the end, for both Nietzsche and Freud, whom she knew and whose bodies of work she had read inside and out. Like no one else in this century, I dare say. She loved them pitilessly, and was implacable towards them (not to mention a few others) at the very moment when, giving them without mercy all that she could, and all that she had, she was inheriting from them and was keeping watch over what they had—what they still have—to tell us, especially regarding art and laughter. |
| Jacques Derrida |
Books
- L'enfance de l'art: Une interprétation de l'esthétique freudienne (1970). Trans.: The Childhood of Art: An Interpretation of Freud's AestheticsAestheticsAesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
(1988). - Nietzsche et la métaphore (1972). Trans.: Nietzsche and Metaphor (1993).
- Camera obscura: De l'idéologie (1973). Trans.: Camera ObscuraCamera obscuraThe camera obscura is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of the inventions that led to photography. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side...
: Of IdeologyIdeologyAn ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
(1998). - Quatre romans analytiques (1974). Trans.: Freud and Fiction (1991).
- Autobiogriffures (1976).
- Aberrations: Le devenir-femme d'Auguste ComteAuguste ComteIsidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte , better known as Auguste Comte , was a French philosopher, a founder of the discipline of sociology and of the doctrine of positivism...
(1978). - Nerval: Le charme de la répétition (1979).
- Nietzsche et la scène philosophique (1979).
- L'énigme de la femme: La femme dans les textes de Freud (1980). Trans.: The Enigma of Woman: Woman in Freud's Writings (1985).
- Le respect des femmes (KantKANTKANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
et Rousseau) (1982). - Comment s'en sortir? (1983).
- Un métier impossible: Lecture de "Constructions en analyse" (1983).
- Lectures de Derrida (1984).
- Mélancholie de l'art (1985).
- Pourquoi rit-on? Freud et le mot d'esprit (1986).
- Paroles suffoquées (1987). Trans.: Smothered Words (1998).
- Conversions: Le Marchand de VeniseThe Merchant of VeniceThe Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
sous le signe de Saturne (1987). - Socrate(s) (1989). Trans.: SocratesSocratesSocrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
: Fictions of a Philosopher (1998). - Séductions: De Sartre à HéracliteHeraclitusHeraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
(1990). - Don JuanDon JuanDon Juan is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630...
ou le refus de la dette (1991). - "Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte": Freud et la spéculation (1991).
- Explosion I: De l'"Ecce Homo" de Nietzsche (1992).
- Explosion II: Les enfants de Nietzsche (1993).
- Le mépris des Juifs: Nietzsche, les Juifs, l'antisémitisme (1994).
- Rue Ordener, rue Labat (1994). Trans.: Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (1996).
- L'imposture de la beauté et autres textes (1995).
- Selected Writings (2007). Edited by Thomas Albrecht, Georgia Albert & Elizabeth G. Rottenberg; introduction by Jacques Derrida.
Articles
Note: this list does not include portions of books where a translation of the entire book was subsequently published.- "No Longer Full-Fledged Autobiogriffies," SubStance 29 (1981): 3–22. From: Autobiogriffures (1976).
- "Sartre: Fort! Ou Da?", Diacritics 14, 4 (1984): 9–18.
- "Damned Food," SubStance 49 (1986): 8–9.
- "Tomb for a Proper Name," SubStance 49 (1986): 9–10.
- "Nightmare: At the Margins of Medieval Studies," SubStance 49 (1986): 10–13. From: Comment s'en sortir? (1983).
- "PrometheusPrometheusIn Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...
, the First Philosopher," SubStance 50 (1986): 26–35. From: Comment s'en sortir? (1983). - "Nietzsche and the Obscurity of Heraclitus," Diacritics 17, 3 (1987): 39–55. From: Séductions: De Sartre à Héraclite (1990).
- "Baubô: Theological Perversion and Fetishism," in Michael Allen Gillespie & Tracy B. Strong, Nietzsche's New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1988). From: Nietzsche et la scène philosophique (1979).
- "Beyond Aporia?", in Andrew BenjaminAndrew BenjaminAndrew Benjamin is an Australian philosopher and Professor of Critical Theory at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Benjamin first came to critical attention with his writings in continental philosophy, writing articles and editing books on the thinking of Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno,...
(ed.), Post-structuralist Classics (London & New York: Routledge, 1988). From: Comment s'en sortir? (1983). - "'Ça cloche'," in Hugh J. Silverman (ed.), Derrida and Deconstruction (New York & London: Routledge, 1989). From: Lectures de Derrida (1984). Originally delivered at the 1980 Cerisy colloquy, "Les finds de l'homme."
- "Conversions: The Merchant of Venice under the Sign of Saturn," in Peter CollierPeter CollierPeter Charles Collier is an Australian politician. He has been a Liberal member of the Western Australian Legislative Council since 2005, representing the North Metropolitan region...
& Helga Geyer-Ryan (eds.), Literary Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). From: Conversions: Le Marchand de Venise sous le signe de Saturne (1987). - "Metaphoric Architectures," in Laurence A. RickelsLaurence A. RickelsLaurence Arthur Rickels is an American literary and media theorist, whose most significant works have continued the Frankfurt School's efforts to apply psychoanalytic insights to analysis and criticism of modern mass media culture. Some of his best known works include The Case of California, The...
(ed.), Looking After Nietzsche (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). - "Descartes Entrapped," in Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, & Jean-Luc NancyJean-Luc NancyJean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...
, Who Comes After the Subject? (New York & London: Routledge, 1991). From: Nietzsche et la scène philosophique (1979). - "Rousseau's Phallocratic Ends," in Nancy FraserNancy FraserNancy Fraser is an American critical theorist, currently the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School in New York City...
& Sandra Lee Bartky (eds.), Revaluing French Feminism: Critical Essays on Difference, Agency, and Culture (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992). - "Explosion I: Of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo," Diacritics 24, 4 (1994): 50–70. From: Explosion I: De l'"Ecce Homo" de Nietzsche (1992).
- "A Fantastical Genealogy: Nietzsche's Family Romance," in Peter J. Burgard (ed.), Nietzsche and the Feminine (Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia, 1994). From: Explosion I: De l'"Ecce Homo" de Nietzsche (1992).
- "'It's Only the First Step That Costs'," in Sonu ShamdasaniSonu ShamdasaniSonu Shamdasani is a London-based author, editor, and professor at the UCL Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London. His works are on the history of psychiatry and psychology from the mid-nineteenth century to current times....
& Michael Münchow (eds.), Speculations After Freud: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Culture (London & New York: Routledge, 1994). From: "Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte": Freud et la spéculation (1991). - "Wagner'sRichard WagnerWilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
Ascetic Ideal According to Nietzsche," in Richard SchachtRichard SchachtRichard Schacht is an American philosopher, currently professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is a renowned expert on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, is the editor of International Nietzsche Studies and is currently Executive Director of the North American...
(ed.), Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). - "The Psychologist of the Eternal Feminine (Why I Write Such Good Books, 5)," Yale French Studies 87 (1995): 173–89. From: Explosion II: Les enfants de Nietzsche (1993).
- "Accessories (Ecce Homo, 'Why I Write Such Good Books,' 'The Untimelies,' 3)," in Peter R. Sedgwick (ed.), Nietzsche: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). From: Explosion II: Les enfants de Nietzsche (1993).
- "The Economy of Respect: Kant and Respect for Women," in Robin May Schott (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Immanuel Kant (University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). From: Le respect des femmes (Kant et Rousseau) (1982).
- "The Imposture of Beauty: The Uncanniness of Oscar Wilde'sOscar WildeOscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
Picture of Dorian GrayThe Picture of Dorian GrayThe Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine...
," in Penelope Deutscher & Kelly Oliver (eds.), Enigmas: Essays on Sarah Kofman (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1999). From: L'imposture de la beauté et autres textes (1995).
Interviews
- "Sarah Kofman," interview with Alice Jardine, in Alice Jardine & Anne M. Menke (eds.), Shifting Scenes: Interviews on Women, Writing, and Politics in Post-68 France (New York & Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1991).
- "Writing without Power: A Conversation with Sarah Kofman," interview with Ursula Konnertz, Women's Philosophy Review (June 1995): 5–8.
Secondary literature
- Chanter, Tina, & Pleshette DeArmitt (eds.), Sarah Kofman's Corpus (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008).
- Deutscher, Penelope, & Kelly Oliver (eds.), Enigmas: Essays on Sarah Kofman (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1999). Includes a foreword by Jean-Luc NancyJean-Luc NancyJean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...
and an extensive bibliography of Kofman's writing. - Robson, Kathryn, Bodily detours: Sarah Kofman's Narratives of Childhood Trauma.
- Faulkner, Joanne,'Keeping it in the Family’: Sarah Kofman Reading Nietzsche as a Jewish Woman.” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. 23[1] January–March 2008: 41-64.
See also
- list of deconstructionists