Jacqueline Rose braids psychoanalytic thinking into political and cultural critique to show us how our internal and external worlds make one another, writing on subjects ranging from Marilyn Monroe to Zionism to Peter Pan. Rose’s most recent book was The Plague.
Where are you right now?
At my desk in my study.
What are you never without?
Mint or rooibos tea, and chocolate — sometimes daily, sometimes more.
When and where do you do your best thinking?
Out walking, where I can be taken by surprise. The best thoughts are unbidden, so I always carry a notebook and also advise students to do so.
What’s the last project you abandoned?
A novel that interweaves the lives of two women philosophers — my sister, Gillian Rose, and Edith Stein — which I abandoned almost 20 years ago, returned to a couple of years ago, and have just finished writing.
Favorite novel?
Too many to select just one, but probably George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda and Proust’s À la recherche.
Favorite smell?
Air anywhere out of the city.
What’s your utopia?
Not utopia but close — on holiday at Southwold-on-Sea in the U.K. with closest family and friends.
How are you experiencing gender these days?
More and more entrenched for some, but, thank goodness, unsettled as ever for many.
What’s your luxury that money can’t buy?
Not quite a luxury; a cherished dream that certainly cannot be bought but has to be endlessly fought for, however much, especially when it fails: justice for all. Right now, without ignoring other suffering and racial hatred, such as the assault on Jews in their synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, that has to be a call for the lives and dignity of the Palestinian people.
What do you fantasize about?
Trick question! Private fantasy is, precisely, fantasy — i.e., not to be shared. Public fantasy across so much of the globe is right now ugly, manipulated, persecutory, and fills me with dread.
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