The Plague: Living Death in Our Times w/ Jacqueline Rose

Jacqueline Rose returns to the show to discuss her new book, The Plague: Living Death in Our Times. We talked about what the Covid-19 pandemic revealed about contemporary society and whether the the initial wave of global solidarity provoked by the crisis was purely a mirage. We also talked about the Ukraine crisis - how Jacqueline connects the themes of war and pandemic in the book - and how Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion has had the troubling consequence of appearing to redeem the foreign policy and security establishments of the United States and Britain. We also talked about the philosopher and mystic Simone Weil, and her refusal to adopt a position of heroic innocence when supporting the allied cause during WWII. And finally, we talked about Sigmund Freud's concept of the death drive - and how it was informed by his own encounter with a pandemic - the so-called Spanish flu that took the life of his daughter Sophie in 1920.