Introduction
Jacqueline Rose, FBA (born 1949, London) is a British academic who is currently Professor of Humanities at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities.
Life and work
Rose was born into a non-practising Jewish family. Her elder sister was the philosopher Gillian Rose. Jacqueline Rose is known for her work on the relationship between psychoanalysis, feminism and literature. She is a graduate of St Hilda's College, Oxford and gained her higher degree (maîtrise) from the Sorbonne, Paris and her doctorate from the University of London.
Her book Albertine, a novel from 2001, is a feminist variation on Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
She is best known for her critical study on the life and work of American poet Sylvia Plath, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, published in 1991. In the book, Rose offers a postmodernist feminist interpretation of Plath's work, and criticises Plath's husband Ted Hughes and other editors of Plath's writing. Rose describes the hostility she experienced from Hughes and his sister (who acts as literary executor to Plath's estate) including threats received from Hughes about some of Rose's analysis of Plath's poem "The Rabbit Catcher". The Haunting of Sylvia Plath was critically acclaimed, and itself subject to a famous critique by Janet Malcolm in her book The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Rose is a broadcaster and contributor to the London Review of Books.
Rose's States of Fantasy was the inspiration for composer Mohammed Fairouz's Double Concerto of the same title.
Criticism of Israel
Rose is highly critical of Zionism, describing it as "[having] been traumatic for the Jews as well as the Palestinians." In the same interview, Rose continues to say, citing Martin Buber and Ahad Ha'am, "If Zionism can produce voices such as these, this is evidence of a fermentation of rare value."
Her stance toward the Jewish state has been described as "Anti-semitic anti-Zionism" by Avner Falk.