Catherine Clément Libri

A comparison of Western and Indian philosophies using syncope, to describe the escape from self and the rapture of uncertainty in human endeavour.

An incisive and impassioned examination of women’s treatment in opera.Catherine Clément analyzes the plots of over thirty prominent operas-Otello and Siegfried to Madame Butterfly and The Magic Flute-through the lenses of feminism and literary theory to unveil the negative messages about women in stories familiar to every opera listener."Is any book about opera more startling and acute than Catherine Clement’s Opera, or the Undoing of Women? Clement’s bitter, uncomfortable insights into ‘this spectacle thought up to adore, and also to kill, the feminine character’ are only now, nearly 25 years after their initial publication in France, beginning to gain currency within the relentlessly male world of music scholarship and criticism. Clement’s impassioned, densely argued study makes the case for a single, obvious, repressed truth: that opera, as Susan McClary argues in the introductory essay, is ‘an art form that demands the submission or death of the female character for the sake of narrative closure,’ a genre in which women who deviate from traditional gender roles-powerful, angry, or sexual women-are abused and destroyed to the accompaniment of irresistibly seductive music."— Women’s Review of Books

Does for spirituality what Sophie's World did for philosophy.

The Call of the Trance is a magnificent book which takes us to the frontiers of the forbidden. These states of 'eclipse’ from life that are pursued by every human being who is in search of meaning are elusive and invariably inexpressible. From initiation ceremonies to crises of hysteria, from suicide attempts to the ecstasies of witches, Catherine Clément explores in simple but scholarly terms the responses that civilizations have offered to this need to disappear. These human beings whose marginal status is a source of anxiety are persecuted by social and religious rules. From the witches of Loudun to current Mongolian shamans, from the eighteenth-century Convulsionaries of Saint-Médard to Greeks of today dancing on the embers of their fires, Clément questions the countless means desire employs to push back the limits of the body. She shows how, from Dionysian antiquity to our own day, the petite mort of the trance state shows up in the lovers’ coup de foudre, in anorexia, rock music, rap, sexual reassignment, eroticism and even Twilight-style vampire stories.

A Communist, feminist, and analysand asks what the social function of psychoanalysis should be and condemns what it has become The Weary Sons of Freud lambasts mainstream psychoanalysis for its failure to grapple with pressing political and social matters pertinent to its patients’ condition. Gifted with insight and compelled by fury, Catherine Clément contrasts the original, inspirational psychoanalytical work of Freud and Lacan to the obsessive imitations of their uninspired followers—the weary sons of Freud. The analyst’s once attentive ear has become deaf to the broader questions of therapeutic practice. Clement asks whether the perspective of socialism, brought to this study by a woman who is herself an analysand, can fill the gap. She reflects on her own history, as well as on that of psychoanalysis and the French left, to show what an activist and feminist restoration of the talking cure might look like.

The story of Mahatma Gandhi is the story of modern India. Rejecting the violence and materialism of modern society, this spiritual leader advocated peaceful methods to achieve social reform, and it was largely through his efforts that India gained independence from British rule in 1947. This study tells his story and shows how his influence has now extended far beyond the barriers of nation.

1947. Lord Mountbatten est intronisé dernier vice-roi des Indes britanniques. A ses côtés, sa femme, la belle lady Edwina, et Nehru, fils spirituel du Mahatma Gandhi. Bientôt, la folie meurtrière des hommes ensanglante l'Inde. Au milieu de ce conflit dévastateur, deux êtres que tout sépare vont s'aimer... Entre la fantasque Edwina, fière anglaise à la peau transparente, et le résistant Nehru, futur Premier ministre de l'Inde libre, est né un amour fou... Emportés dans la tourmente de l'Histoire, ils résistent à tous les obstacles. Pendant douze ans, ils s'écrivent chaque nuit, se retrouvent un mois par an. Jusqu'à la mort d'Edwina... Catherine Clément nous conte l'histoire magnifique de ce couple mythique devenu légendaire.

Le récit du périple du rhinocéros empaillé de l'empereur Rodolphe illustre l'Europe du XVIe siècle, mettant en lumière les débuts des Temps modernes à travers la politique des Habsbourg, les guerres de religion, la philosophie de Descartes et l'art d'Arcimboldo.