The Virgin and the Rose: Dispossession as Feminine Political Theology in Simone Weil and Gillian Rose

This project is a critical comparative analysis of the political theology of French Catholic philosopher Simone Weil (1909–1943) and English Jewish philosopher Gillian Rose (1947–1995). I invert the criticism that Weil and Rose’s controversial relation to themselves as women as well their silence concerning the political status of women compromises their work. I do this by demonstrating that their thought contains a ‘feminine’ dimension. This feminine dimension is the rejection of the modern subject who possesses pure reason and the embrace of the epistemological method of ‘dispossession’, understood as a form of the theological concept ‘kenosis’.