I've read and enjoyed other works by Jacqueline Rose so was intrigued by this book. It covers the Covid-19 pandemic whilst referencing back to Camus' The Plague as well as the Spanish Flu outbreak from 100 years ago and the current war in Ukraine. I found parts of this book were really interesting and compelling but other parts lost me a little. I think in part it's due to the formatting of this ARC so I may pick up a print copy of the book and re-read it in the future.

I was worried when I picked up a non-fic about the pandemic that it would be too on the nose but I really really loved the book. The writing was super solid and just loved the way the author choose to explore the topic. Would 100% read from this author again.

Thank you to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for sending me an advanced copy

A very powerful and gripping story that is difficult to read in some parts but worth sticking with. The E-Book could be improved and more user-friendly, such as links to the chapters, no significant gaps between words and a cover for the book would be better. It is very document-like instead of a book. A star has been deducted because of this.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

It's telling that these interconnected essays written between March 2020 at the start of the UK lockdown and February/March 2022 just after Russia invaded Ukraine already feel... not dated, but not quite current. As I write this, the UK Covid enquiry is already mired in absurdist Tory politics as the Government seeks to take out a legal injunction <i>against its own enquiry</i> headed by a former judge appointed by the Government itself over the release of all requested Government communications that fed into Covid decision-making. (It's also snarkily amusing to see this Government using the principles of human rights as a defence of their cover-up, given that they are at public war with the very concept of human rights, not least when it comes to the humane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers - but that's another story.) And Rose had no idea, though could probably have guessed at, the extended predations of Russia in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, it's always both stimulating and comforting to see one's own thoughts and feelings reflected back through such a sharp and lucid intellect as Rose (who, I should say, is one of my icons). She frames these essays around Camus, especially [book:La peste|770754]/[book:The Plague|1113856], Freud on the psychoanalytics of hysteria, neuroticism, trauma and death, and Simone Weil, philosophical humanist <i>par excellence</i> with her own experience of war, inequality, and activism. Indeed, it's important that the epigraph to this collection comes from Weil:

We are not really without hope. The mere fact that we exist, that we conceive and want something different from what exists, constitutes a reason for hope.
(Oppression and Liberty, 1933)

This is, then, not a hopeless collection though there is much cause for despair: from the dismantling of humanities teaching in the UK university sector ('no-one I know doubts for one minute that this is a reaction to the role that universities are playing in creating a space for social critique at a time when it has never been more needed') to the massive and widening inequalities on individual, group, community and country basis; from the uneven and controversial responses to Covid to the re-emergence of right-wing extremism.

Rose, inevitably, treats these issues of our present moment through her own scholarly expertise in Freud and psychoanalysis, and the philosophical writings that tackle race, class, gender and economic inequalities. Her readings of Camus and Weil help us contextualise our experience, not least of the sudden undeniable presence of public death as a result of Covid and the war in Ukraine, no longer something we can repress and deny.

Rose's writing is lucid and accessible: this is her writing for a public, not an academic audience, and she gives a thoughtful, sensitive account of how we might think about some of the most pressing anxieties of our time.

A series of short, interconnected essays reflecting on the period covering March 2020 to early 2022 from academic and cultural critic Jaqueline Rose, building on articles originally circulated in places like The Guardian, The New York Review of Books or as lectures. Rose draws on a range of literary, psychoanalytic and philosophical frameworks and writers to consider the world during Covid, as well as what might lie ahead.

It's a meditative, erudite collection that suggests avenues of thought rather than poses definitive answers or solutions. Rose’s particularly invested in exploring the ways in which Covid exposed dramatic social and political fault-lines, challenging widely-held myths centred on the solidarity and the inevitability of progress. She’s also, unsurprisingly, focused on possible responses to direct encounters – new for many parts of the world – with mass death, tied to Covid and then the war in Europe. She uses Camus’s novel The Plague which sold in its thousands during Covid’s early months, to explore, among other things, the resurgence of ideas about contagion which leaked into or were deliberately exploited to justify countries like Britain’s policies on refugees. Camus also enables a consideration of the ways in which mass death may highlight or encourage the pitting of people against one another – at the height of Covid, ageism, ableism and racism both on an individual and wider political level were very much to the fore.

Rose then turns to Freud and his writings post-WW1, some of which can be interpreted as his reaction to the loss of his daughter Sophie during the post-war outbreak of Spanish Flu. A loss that inflected his thinking on issues of life and the presence of death – actual or impending. The aftermath of monumental loss and grief leading to what Freud termed a kind of “transgenerational haunting” which demanded a collective as much as an individual response, which Rose sees manifested in an underlying call for solidarity in his post-war theorising.

This idea of solidarity and of the need for collective responsibility, both during and after the pandemic, is expanded in Rose’s essay on philosopher and anti-fascist, anti-colonialist activist Simone Weil who was predominantly writing during WW2. The, somewhat contradictory, Weil was dedicated to promoting an ethics of love and mutual care, believing in an urgent need to “make common cause” with those wider society deemed as marginal or disposable. Rose ties Weil’s work to her own discussion of the situations faced by many women during lockdowns, often forced to take on the brunt of domestic labour from childcare to home-schooling to housework, a ‘re-traditionalising’ for many – at least in the West – of the domestic sphere. She then examines the impact of those shifts on domestic violence which rocketed during lockdowns, resulting in a so-called ‘shadow pandemic’ in which, drawing on Kristeva’s words, women were literally punished for the fragility of the outside world.

In “Life After Death” Rose muses on the possible legacies of Covid, for many mercilessly exposing the precarity and unpredictability of their previously taken-for-granted existence. For the ultra-wealthy, like Jeff Bezos, money is most often pinned as saviour. But Rose is more interested in those who’ve responded beyond the level of the individual by confronting injustice, part of which requires an ongoing atonement for the past particularly the lingering impact of colonialism and slavery.

In her afterword “On Virtue” which builds on philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s classic piece, Rose considers the spotlight the pandemic shone on failure to take responsibility - politically, culturally or individually - and the links between this and the looming crisis posed by rapidly-accelerating climate change and rising global inequality. Rose is a member of the May ’68 generation but one of those who’s retained a political conscience and desire for change but there’s still a lingering hint of idealism in her discussion which can sometimes make it a little broad sweep. Although it’s still the most convincing of the pandemic-era books I’ve read. Rose is most passionate when addressing Weil - she certainly succeeded in making me eager to read more about Weil’s life and actions, even when I felt Rose was a little too forgiving of the gaps in Weil’s thinking. It’s a fairly sober book but it’s fairly accessible, and not without glimmers of hope, woven into Rose’s overview of a deeply fragmented, fractured world is an emphasis on possibility glimpsed through what she calls “flashes of radical empathy.”

Jacqueline Rose’s “The Plague” is a collection of essays that explores a range of topics, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukrainian war, death, equality, and equitable distribution of wealth.

In “The Plague,” Rose aims to offer a unique and perceptive viewpoint on the societal implications of a pandemic and the complexities of the modern world. Drawing upon the ideas of thinkers such as Albert Camus, Freud, and Simone Weil, she challenges conventional notions of power dynamics and urges readers to confront the inevitability of death.

Read more on https://marginalspace.substack.com/p/the-plague-by-jacqueline-rose?sd=pf

This clever and intriguing collection of essays is an excellent analysis of various subjects on the theme of death. Rose explores the well-known novel by Albert Camus, exploring the importance of the novel historically and within society, particularly during the recent pandemic.

Other essays explore the Covid-19 panic and the very topical subject of the war currently waging in Ukraine. Rose has some truly insightful analysis and posits some incredibly interesting ideas. Whilst this was not my favorite essay collection due to the very morose subject matter I thought it was very relevant and topical and definitely a book that I would read much farther in the future, to look back on events such and the pandemic and I would recommend to those interested in these kind of themes.

'The Plague' has moments of brilliance that tie threads between COVID, war in Ukraine, and the events of a century before with the Great War and the Spanish flu. However, it feels quite disjointed and tangential at times, and I felt that I needed better knowledge of Freud's works and Camus' novel to really get the most out of this one. This will appeal to a very specific reader.

“The plague sparks a revolution in the blood. It erupts like a protest or insurrection, offering a fleeting moment of lucidity in an unjust world.” I have mixed feelings about The Plague, a book of essays by Jacqueline Rose about the pandemic of 2020 and various matters that intersect with it, across history, literature, culture and more. It starts off strong, reflecting on questions around truth, war-as-pandemic, and despair, and then considering how the death of Freud’s favourite daughter, after she caught the Spanish Flu, had an influence on his work (‘death drive’ seems to have been coined two weeks later, for instance). At this point, however, the collection starts to come unstuck, for me; the chapter ‘Living Death’ raises some crucial points about the “shadow pandemic” of domestic abuse; unfortunately, its condemnation of lockdown fails to offer another option, and seems to blame public health for private violence — it’s a tricky arena, and one I am struggling even in brief, in review, to sum up well, but Rose’s argument feels just as not-there as mine. Further, the point about ‘feminicide’ in the essay seemed a bit nebulous, even aimless. The next essay states, with reference to racism and discrimination, that “People will no longer accept denials that the problem exists” — but who are these “people”? Perhaps it’s a matter of mood, but the optimistic generalising in places didn’t sit quite well with me; meanwhile the later essay on Simone Weil, through well-written and enjoyable, did feel unfocused at times and in all less relevant than any other essay in the book. It is, altogether, an interesting read, frustrating for the biggest part because it feels like it could’ve been great.

The Plague is a collection of essays written by Jacqueline Rose in the context of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, in connection with the works of Albert Camus, Freud and Simone Weil. From time to time, I like to read a book like this, full of ideas, arguments and analysis, a new perspective on current events to provide food for thought and things to consider. For example, the author highlights that two things can be true at the same time, staying home to protect the vulnerable people around us and limit exposure, infections and death, while also staying home might mean domestic violence, transforming into the unprotected. It was also interesting for me the discussion about death and how we perceive it, how we think about it, now more than ever.

The essays are showing the intellectual power of the author, they are close to academic style and I generally liked reading it, however I felt there was something missing, that could have convinced me to love it. That missing part could be the writing style, the way things are presented, but also I would have liked to have more of the author's opinions, in addition to the other writers mentioned.

Thank you, Fitzcarraldo Editions and Netgalley, for providing me with an ARC in exchange for a honest review!

Following the covid pandemic, I feel that a lot of our attitudes towards death and dying have shifted dramatically. As such, nonficiton such as this is so important for navigating these new paradigms.

Accessible, passionate, wide-ranging while relentless in its focus - my first experience of nonfiction from Fitzcarraldo did not disappoint.

Rose is always interesting and often challenging, and this collection of essays, while not exactly controversial, certainly caused the occasional eyebrow raise. I really enjoyed it, though found myself more engaged during the sections on Freud and Klein than I was during the section that focused on Simone Weil.

My thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions and NetGalley for the ARC.

The latest publication from the admirable Fitzcarraldo Editions is a collection of typically acute essays, first published in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books and elsewhere, by Jacqueline Rose on death, the pandemic and war in Ukraine. Their recentness gives them the quality of contemporaneous testimony (and reminders of early government failures reminds us how much happened so quickly), combined with the depth and power of Rose's analysis. The earliest essay, the title essay on Camus' The Plague, is a much more considered analysis of the novel than many that appeared in the wake of the pandemic in 2020 and prepares us for the collection's open and regretful examination of how death has haunted us during the period. It is followed by essays on Freud, the isolation of lockdown (including the "shadow pandemic" of the increase in domestic violence), reconstruction (which is suitably scathing about the culture wars), and the centrepiece essay, 'Simone Weil and the Limits of Justice', which is less immediate in effect than its predecessors but persistence pays off. This is a characteristically impressive essay collection which does what Esposito says of Weil (as quoted by Rose): it 'read[s] history from its dark side, in search of the ‘torn heart’ beating from within ‘extreme discord’, a beat in which she never lost faith." Recommended.