Sarah Kofman


Sarah Kofman was a French philosopher.

Biography

Kofman began her teaching career in Toulouse in 1960 at the, and worked with both Jean Hyppolite and Gilles Deleuze. Her abandoned primary thesis for her State doctorate, later published as Nietzsche et la métaphore, was supervised by Deleuze. In 1969 Kofman met Jacques Derrida and began attending his seminars at the École Normale Supérieure.
Kofman did not receive tenure until 1991, when she was appointed to a chair at Paris I.
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, is perhaps the most thorough consideration of Freud's ideas concerning female sexuality.

Writings

Though many of her philosophical writings focused on Nietzsche and Freud, Kofman wrote several works in an autobiographical vein. Paroles suffoquées is dedicated to the memory of her father, rabbi Bereck Kofman, whom she saw for the last time on July 16, 1942, and who was killed at Auschwitz.
Rue Ordener, rue Labat also opens with the removal of her father by the Vichy police, and describes what Kofman understands to have been his fate. The title refers to two Parisian streets: the address at which her family lived until her father's arrest; and the address at which she was sheltered for much of the remainder of the war. Kofman was taken in by a Parisian divorcée who became her surrogate mother and whom she called Mémé. The book tells the story of this period, and of the custody dispute between Mémé and Kofman's mother following the liberation of Paris.

Death

Kofman committed suicide in 1994. The fact that she did so on the date of Nietzsche's 150th birthday has been seen by some writers as significant. After her death, Jacques Derrida wrote the following:

Books

Note: this list does not include portions of books where a translation of the entire book was subsequently published.