Women in Dark Times begins with three remarkable women: revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg; German–Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon; and film icon Marilyn Monroe. Bound together by their struggles against iniquity and blazing a trail across some of the defining features of the twentieth century – revolution, totalitarianism and the American dream – these women's stories compel 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 psychoanalyst Jacqueline Rose forges a new language for feminism. Extending her argument into the present, Rose grapples with '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 calls on us to enter the landscape of the night, confronting the public and private pain of these defiant, visionary women to embrace a scandalous feminism and struggle for the political futures we want to build.
