The Subject is Studying Gillian Rose

Abstract

This is a series of peculiar fragments that emerged when I tried to write a thesis paper about Gillian Rose. More specifically, I tried to write about the words of Gillian Rose in Love’s Work, the autobiography she wrote and published shortly before her death. This piece is the document of my months-long frantic, turbulent, constant conversation with Rose. Rose’s book and this piece are both about “Love’s Work,” the lifework which is Rose’s subject and which I was trying and notably failing, in my own life, to perform. It was this failure that came in and collided with Rose’s own fruitful failure, and gave birth to more failure, these fragments and the spaces that surround them.