Sarah Kofman

Sarah Kofman (1934–1994) 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 she 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.

Works

(in French unless noted)

• L'enfance de l'art. Une interprétation de l'esthétique freudienne, Paris: Payot, 1970.
  • The Childhood of Art: An Interpretation of Freud's Aesthetics, Columbia University Press, 1988, 239 pp. (English) Review: Korda (1988).

• Nietzsche et la métaphore, Paris: Payot, 1972; 2nd ed., rev., Galilée, 1983; 3rd ed., rev. & augm., 1985.
  • Nietzsche and Metaphor, Stanford University Press, 1994, ARG, DJVU. (English)

• Camera obscura. De l'idéologie, Paris: Galilée, 1973.
  • Camera Obscura: Of Ideology, Cornell University Press, 1998, PDF, ARG. (English)

• Quatre romans analytiques, Paris: Galilée, 1974.
  • Freud and Fiction, trans. Sarah Wykes, Polity Press, 1991, PDF, ARG. (English)

• L'énigme de la femme: La femme dans les textes de Freud, Paris: Galilée, 1980; 2nd ed., rev., 1983.
  • The Enigma of Woman: Woman in Freud's Writings, 1985. (English)

• Le Respect des femmes: Kant et Rousseau, Paris: Galilée, 1982.

• Un métier impossible. Lecture de « Constructions en analyse », Paris: Galilée, 1983, ARG.

• Paroles suffoquées, Paris: Galilée, 1987.
  • Smothered Words, 1998. (English)

• Socrate(s), Paris: Galilée, 1989.
  • Socrates: Fictions of a Philosopher, 1998. (English)

• Rue Ordener, rue Labat, Paris: Galilée, 1994.
  • Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, 1996. (English)

• Selected Writings, eds. Thomas Albrecht, Georgia Albert and Elizabeth G. Rottenberg, intro. Jacques Derrida, 2007. (English)

Literature

• Penelope Deutscher, Kelly Oliver (eds.), Enigmas: Essays on Sarah Kofman, Cornell University Press, 1998, ARG. (English)
• Tina Chanter, Pleshette Dearmitt (eds.), Sarah Kofman's Corpus, SUNY Press, 2008, PDF. (English)

Links

• Kofman at Wikipedia