Institut Ramon LLull

Intermissions are those breaks in the play when the stage empties and the audience makes a bee-line for the cocktail bar. Yet far from being barren pauses, they give us a golden opportunity to think things through, undistracted by the action. Fina Birulés uses a kind of ‘intermission’ in her book to give the reader a similar chance for reflection. The texts are split into two parts. The first asks us what we really mean when we talk of ‘women’. This is a question of identity that is not only closely linked to political responsibility but also to the individual and collective freedoms that are now threatened. The second part sketches the thought of various thinkers throughout the 20th Century, such as Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil, as well as less well-known ones such as Sarah Kofman and Jeanne Hersh. It does not seek to justify their feminism but rather to show that their unorthodox thought helps us wander off “today’s beaten tracks”. The book makes a compelling case and is both deep and revealing.