The late Gillian Rose is a philosopher and social theorist whose books, The Broken Middle, Hegel Contra Sociology, Mourning Becomes the Law, and, to a smaller extent, Love’s Work provided some inspiration to my critique of post-structuralism scattered throughout parts of my doctoral work. Rose is a fascinating read. She did what few dared: critique poststructuralism at a time when most everyone that read French was head over heels with it. She was a Jewish thinker too, but a few years before her untimely death she converted to Christianity. That made her even more interesting for me. One major drawback, however, was her impossibly cryptic prose. Derrida was easy compared to her. Foucault came close, although she was not quite as bad as Deleuze. I had planned to write an introduction to her philosophy and theology, but that project was just impossible to carry out from Romania.
At any rate, I was pleasantly surprised to find the latest issue of The Heythrop Journal in the mailbox today, and even more pleasantly surprised to see a piece on Gillian Rose (Vincent Lloyd, ‘On the Use of Gillian Rose’, HeyJ 48/5, Sept 2007). I got to it right away. It talked about how Tony Gorman and Graham Ward get her completely wrong, while Rowan Williams comes closest, but remains incomplete. I won’t get into the details here, but there was something that caught my attention: I almost choked with disbelief.
Speaking about Graham Ward’s drawing on Rose in his Christ and Culture, Lloyd writes that Ward’s description of ‘the broken middle’ does not sound like the Rose’s middle, but it does sound more like the description of sacred space in Gillian Rose’s Feminism and Geography. He then goes on to notice that Ward does not mention this book in Christ and Culture, although he does mention it in Cities of God. This is a feminist understanding of social space which plays right into the hands of Ward’s argument.
And here comes the bomb:
The problem, however, is that in 1997 the brilliant philosopher Gillian Rose was not immersing herself in the arts community of Edinburgh. Rather, she was, as we say in Middle America, pushing up daisies. Was this a posthumous article? No. To solve the riddle: Gertrude Stein notwithstanding, there are two Roses who not only share a first and a last name but share overlapping interests in post-structuralist theory, architecture, and urban planning. Or, rather there were two Roses: extant Rose presently teaches at Open University; deceased Rose remains deceased. (702)
How could this happen? Lloyd vouches that ‘this observation is not meant to be maliciously directed at Professor War: this slippage between the two Roses could quite possibly be unconscious and is at any rate certainly understandable.’
OK, let’s pause here. Even I knew that Feminism and Geography does not belong to the Gillian Rose who also wrote Love’s Work. Anyone who does research on an author is (or should be) quite knowledgeable about the primary sources. There aren’t that many anyway.
Secondly, Prof. Ward does not include Feminism and Geography in the bibliography of Christ and Culture and, while Lloyd may be right that his description of sacred space is more similar to the feminist geographer, it is an unsubstantiated conjecture that Ward wasn’t aware of the difference.
At any rate, to imply that someone of the stature of Prof. Ward [by the way, I didn't study under him] did not know the difference - based on so little - is quite cavalier.
Hello –
I’m glad to see that you read the article and found it at least provocative!
If I could make a few points:
1) The primary purpose of the article was to clarify theological misuses of Rose’s work. As I show, both Tony Gorman and Graham Ward attribute to Rose views to which she was clearly, and vehemently, opposed.
2) It is hard to overstate how confusing the “two Roses” issue is. Just to reiterate: both are/were named Gillian Rose, both are/were interested in social theory, feminism, architecture/geography, etc., and both are/were British academics. When one does a database search for “gillian rose,” there is effectively no way to tell which Rose is showing up without being quite familiar with their work.
3) Here is what Ward says: allegory “is also a strategy for the disruption of geographical space, installing a deliberate obfuscation of spatial dimensions. A sacred space is opened, what Gillian Rose has called the ‘broken middle’. This is a space which is constantly transgressing its own dimensions, a space that cannot be located ‘here’ or ‘there’ because it is a space that cannot be contained, a space that deconstructs its boundaries… This space can neither be limited nor defined.” This sort of characterization of space is exactly what Rose argues against when she finds it in Milbank and Mark C. Taylor’s work. But extant Rose, the geography professor at Open University, writes about space as fluid, ‘fragmented’ and ‘provisional’, allowing for ‘diasporic understandings of “community”‘ and performing “critical anti-essentializing.”
4) Yes, clearly Ward is knowledgeable about Rose (i.e., he included text from Rose in his anthology “The Postmodern God”), yet the (minor) point is that when you have two people with the same name it is very easy to have a slippage between the two. This is basic psychoanalysis, and clear from everyday life. A friend of mine was dating a man named “David” and also was studying under a professor named “David.” In the middle of a conversation about her boyfriend, she would unthinkingly switch to talking about the other “David.” (The major point, of course, is that Ward is associating Rose with a position to which she would clearly be opposed).
Vincent Lloyd
Thanks for commenting, Vincent. I think your last point is more plausible one than what transpires from your article, but that means that Ward clearly knows the difference, while he inadvertently switches between the Roses. It seems hard to believe that Ward, being so close to John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Rowan Williams, all of whom know Gillian’s work pretty well, would not know the difference.
I think you are absolutely right, though, that it can be confusing!
I am not speak english.I am from Srbia.I am Romenia.
Well spotted, Adi! I am also surprised to see such misplacements on Ward’s side! Ironically though, good sample of psychoanalysis and deconstruction! Congrats on your excellent blog! PS I realy like the ‘julijana’ comment! Fits the context well!