To Desire What Is Nothing: Simone Weil, Asceticism and Psychoanalysis

For a short while she is here, and then, for some time, she is nowhere. In the years following her death she is a curiosity, an oddity and an enigma; or perhaps a neurotic, a narcissist and a fraud. She is a frigid anorexic, a fanatical communist and a self-hating Jew. She is dismissed by de Gaulle, scorned by Bataille and snubbed by Trotsky. But she acquires a starry coterie of defenders: Camus, T.S. Eliot and Iris Murdoch. She is published. She is translated. She is quoted. She is biographised. She is the Red Virgin and the Categorical Imperative in Skirts. She is anthologised. She is paraphrased. She is praised by the pope. She is written about by poets. She is a mystic. She is a heretic. She is a Great Jewish Thinker. She is a revolutionary. She is a theory of S&M. She is in memes. She is in Instagram handles. She is a tradcath. She is a sad girl. She is based. She is cringe. She is everywhere.