Woolf and Weil

Zachary Carroll in a 2013 Radford University Thesis entitled "The Political Thought of Simone Weil and British Modernism," notes that previously only one scholar, Marcus (Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant 1983) has in any significant way compared the thought of Weil and Woolf.

I have found that while a few primarily European works such as the following discuss Weil and Woolfe, they do indeed appear not to provide any comparisons of  the two:
Del Serra, Maura. "Le Mie "Eccentriche": Lasker-Schüler, Kolmar, Weil, Woolf, Masfield, Guidacci." Le Eccentriche: Scrittrici Del Novecento. Eds. Botta, Anna, Monica Farnetti and Giogio Rimondi. Asteres. Mantova: Tre Luna Edizioni, 2003. 81-94.
Fabbri, Moreno, and Daniela Marcheschi, eds. Scrittrici Del Novecento Europeo : Karin Boye, Else Lasker-Schüler, Gianna Manzini, Virginia Woolf, Simone Weil, Marina Cvetaeva. Pistoia: CRT, 1998.

Fusini, Nadia. "Simone." Hannah e le Altre. Torino: Einaudi, 2013. 17-48. 

Gaeta, Giancarlo. "Woolf, Weil, Hillesum: La Libertà Di Pensare Le Cose Come Sono " Lo Straniero 1.1 (1997): 87-98.
Mutter, Matthew D. "Poetry against Religion, Poetry as Religion: Secularism and Its Discontents in Literary Modernism." PhD. Yale University, 2009.

Check out JURN for access to recent publications on Weil

 Jurn   provides great access to academic material (books, essays, articles, theses) freely available on the web.


Here are a few examples of  works  I have located today through a search for Weil on Jurn:

Adams, Catherine. "What's in a Name? The Experience of the Other in Online Classrooms." Phenomenology & Practice 1 (2014): 51-67.

Diaz, Marian K. "Friendship and Contemplation: An Exploration of Two Forces Propelling the Transcendent Hope and  Power of the Liberal Arts." Integritas: Advancing the Mission of Catholic Higher Education 2.2 (2013): 1-18.. 

Mariz, Debora. "Reflexões acerca do corpo do trabalhador no pensamento da filósofa francesa Simone Weil." Revista de Terapia Ocupacional da Universidade de São Paulo 25.2 (2014): 194-98. . 

Mattiussi, Laurent. "Désigner l’impensable : Simone Weil et Maurice Blanchot."  Simone Weil et le poétique. Eds. Jérôme Thélot, Jean-Michel Le Lannou and Enikö Sepsi. Cahiers de Marge. Paris: Kimé, 2007. 237-54.   https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/file/index/docid/945791/filename/LM_Blanchot_S.Weil_impensable.pdf

Secchi, Pietro. "Descartes nella riflessione politica di Simone Weil." Lexicon Philosophicum: International Journal for the History of Text and Ideas 2 (2014 ): 261-87. . 

Wood, William. "Analytic Theology as a Way of Life." Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2014). Brief mention of Weil in the section on the importance of attention to analytic theology. . 

Upcoming Conference with section on Weil

December 27-30 the American  Weil Society has a  session at the annual conference of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy:

From the Conference Progam:
AMERICAN WEIL SOCIETY
(AWS)
Acadian II
Friday, 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Simone Weil and Continental Philosophy Roundtable
Moderator: A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone, University of North Dakota
“From Modern Crisis to Rooted Truth: Weil and the Phenomenological Critique of Science”
Alice Holt, University of Oxford
“Jacob Klein as an Interpretive Bridge between Simone Weil and Phenomenology”
Joseph Cosgrove, Providence College
“Ora et labora: Orientation and Apprenticeship in the Writings of Edith Stein and Weil”
Mauricio Najarro, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley
“Simone Weil and Michael Henry as Readers of Marx”
Inese Radzins, Pacific School of Religion
“Working-With: Bringing Together Reflections from Simone Weil and Jean-Luc Nancy”
Adam Pryor, Bethany College
“One-Dimensional Suffering: Weil’s ‘Affliction’ and Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man”
Scott B. Ritner, The New School for Social Research
“Weil’s Analysis of Oppression and the Global Debt Regime”
Lissa McCullough, California State University, Dominguez Hills
“Philosophy and Her Poor: Weil and Rancière on the Role of Attention, Education, and
Listening in Emancipatory Politics”
Sophie Bourgault, University of Ottawa

Amazing where you will find references to Weil

Just located this theiss which contains a brief discussion of the thoughts of Weil and Bataille on force:

Haumschild, Daniel T. "The Pitfalls of National Reconstruction: History, Pedagogy and Politics in Rwanda's Post-Genocide Education Institutions" Diss. The University at Buffalo, State University of New York, 2014. ProQuest Dissertations.

Bas Jan Ader, artist and filmmaker

Francisco Sousa in a 2013 article in Performance Research highlights parallels between Weil and Adler:

Lobo, Francisco Sousa. "Theology After Bas Jan Ader." Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 18.4 (2013): 69-72. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13528165.2013.814346

Simone Weil and field of political science

Helen Kinsella has just published an introduction to Weil in the work  Émigré scholars and the genesis of international relations: a European discipline in America? Ed. Felix Rosch. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

In it she notes that Weil is not studied very much in the discipline of political science and not at all in international relations.  She  references my bibliography as  evidence for this assertion!

I do note that  that while I do not have much indexed under politics or political science,  there are over 150 items for Marx or Maxism.  When I did a search in the International Political Science Abstracts or PAIS I did not locate much for Weil, but when I did a search that included the fulltext through the database Political Science Complete I retrieved almost 200 works published between 1995 to 2014.  While a number of these are very brief references to Weil,  I am in the process of working through these and have so far added nine new records into the bibliography.

L'Herne has published a book on Simone Weil

L'Herne series honouring key authors and philosophers now has a volume for Simone Weil

Simone on Twitter

Amazing number of people quoting Weil on Twitter!

Enracinement/déracinement

Just tripped across this article which has not yet been assigned to an issue of  Cultural Studies of Science Education:

Roth, Wolf-Michael. "Enracinement or the Earth, the Originary Ark, Does Not Move: On the Phenomenological (Historical and Ontogenetic) Origin of Common and Scientific Sense and the Genetic Method of Teaching (for) Understanding." DOI 10.1007/s11422-014-9606-z

From abstract: "In this study, I take up Simone Weil’s concepts of enracinement (rooting) and déracinement (uprooting) to theorize the root of this alienation, the confrontation between children’s familiarity with the world and unfamiliar/strange scientific conceptions"

Simone Weil Bibliography now updated

Simone Weil Bibliography  has been upgraded to new version of Biblio that allows for much better searching.  It also now includes over 2500 records.  I will be adding to this on a more regular basis.  Currently this reflects over 70 percent of records collected to date.  Due to initial problems in importing Japanese and Chinese material, many are still missing from the posted bibliography.  Hope to have this fixed shortly.

Please forward to me any errors and/or suggestions for keywords.  It has been particularly challenging for me to assign keywords for works in the wide variety of languages represented!

Gombrowicz and Julliard reflect on Weil in their journals

Both  Witold Gombrowicz and Jacques  Julliard  reference Weil in their journals:

Gombrowicz, Witold. Journal. Vol. 1 (1953-1958). Paris: Gallimard, 1995. References to Simone pages 69-70, 368 and 371-379.
Julliard, Jacqies. L'année des dupes: Journal de la fin du siècle  1995. Paris: Seuil, 1996. See pages 219-223 for references to Weil.

Work

The journal Philosophy of Management  has an article applying Weil's thoughts on work to effective management of the workplace:

Noël-Lemaitre, Christine, and Séverine Le Loarne-Lemaire. "Human Resource Management and Distress at Work:  What Managers Could Learn from the Spirituality of Work in Simone Weil's Philosophy." Philosophy of Management 11.2 (2012): 63-83.

Suffering and evil

An Italian collection of articles on the Shoah includes an article by Umberto Regina:

Regina, Umberto. "Forza e dolore in Simone Weil."  Dopo la shoah : un nuovo inizio per il pensiero. Ed. Isabella Adinolfi. Studi storici Carocci. Roma: Carocci, 2011. 261-73.  

Irving Babbitt

While searching for something else  I tripped across this reference to an article by George Panichas comparing Simone Weil and Irving Babbitt:

Panichas, George A. "Irving Babbitt and Simone Weil." Critical Legacy of Irving Babbitt. Willmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 1999. 107-29.

Enlarged and enhanced version of bibliography now available

I do apologize for my silence on the blog! The last few months I have been busy with other projects so have not had time to add resources to the bibliography.  One of these projects is the mounting of the bibliography on the new version of  Drupal.  I have not yet switched over the website, but in the meantime you can use the enhanced version of the bibliography (over 2500 records) on the test site - see URL below.  Should have access off www.ucalgary.ca/simoneweil within the next few weeks.

https://wcm.ucalgary.ca/simoneweil/

Commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Weil's death

I previously noted that issue 85 of  Prospettiva Persona has a collection of articles commemorating the 70th anniversary of Weil's death.  Please note that issue 86 also has a section on Weil.  http://www.prospettivapersona.it/index.php/riviste/prospettiva.html


Bufano, M. "A Simone Weil."
Canevari, Matteo. "L'universalismo dell'amore nel cristianesimo di Simone Weil."
Di Nicola, Giulia Paola. "Lasciandosi interrogare da Simone Weil."
Farina, Paolo. " Dalla parte dell'uomo, dalla parte di Dio."
Fiori, Gabiella. "Lanza del Vasto e Simone Weil."
Ziccardi, Maria Giovanna. " Sulla soglia del diritto: i diritti ripensati da Simone Weil."

Forgiveness

Stuart Jesson in 2010 published a thesis entitled Forgiveness and its Reason which uses Weil's writings to discuss the concept of forgiveness.  Includes over 350 references to Weil!

Simone and Buddhism

I have located a few works on Weil and Buddhism, including the one below on Zen Buddhism:

鈴木 順子  (Suzuki, Junko). "破壊された魂の行方 : 鈴木大拙を読むシモーヌ・ヴェイユ(研究論文) (Apres la destruction de l'ame : Simone Weil, lectrice de Daisetz Suzuki)." フランス語フランス文学研究 (Études de langue et littérature françaises) 100 (2012): 239-53. . 


Other works include (Note annotations were written by Debra Jensen):


Little, J.P. (Janet Patricia). "Simone Weil and tantric buddhism." Cahiers Simone Weil 27.1 (2004): 47-60. Little looks at Simone Weil's encounter with Tantric Buddhism, primarily her response to Alexandra David Néel's Magic and Mystery in Tibet as well as Milarepa's thought found in the translation by J. Bacot in 1925, titled Milarépa,  ses crimes, ses preuves, son nirvana.   Little briefly describes how and when Weil came to these texts before focusing on Weil's comments on Tibetan deity practice specifically in relation to her notions of reading, decreation and necessity.  Little also outlines Weil's thought on the Tibetan practice of chod, comparing it to the 'difficult' prayer found in Weil’s “La connaissance surnaturaelle”, where Weil asks to  be stripped of all of her mental and physical capacities; a prayer that has both intrigued and horrified her readers.   Little ends by commenting on Weil's fascination with Milarepa's attitude towards food, noting how well it fits with Weil's own preoccupation with it.


Lussy, Florence de. "To On: A Nameless Something Over which the Mind Stumbles."  The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil. Eds. E. Jane Doering and Eric O. Springsted. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. 115-32. De Lussy  focuses here on Weil’s statement found in her notebooks that “In Plato, translate to on by the real”. De Lussy’s essay constitutes a carefully nuanced, in-depth consideration of exactly what Weil means by this statement.  She traces the development of Weil’s thought in this understanding of ‘the real’ from her early writings at age seventeen, through her encounter with Zen Buddhism in the work of D.T. Suzuki to the more fully developed elaboration in her writing on Greek mathematics and philosophy.  Central to the latter are Weil’s ideas of harmony and mystery, particularly her notion of convenable which De Lussy says, Weil somewhat redefines as “the concept of what is outside all concept” (p. 122).

Pirruccello, Ann. "Making the World My Body: Simone Weil and Somatic Practice." Philosophy East & West 52.4 (2002): 479-97. Pirruccello discusses Simone Weil’s views of the body in comparison to some Japanese Buddhist forms of somatic practice.  She begins by outlining Weil’s views on the body and their relationship to her religious thought paying particular attention to her notions of attention, reading, apprenticeship and the self or ego.  She next briefly presents Weil’s tentative identification of ways of incorporating bodily practice into one’s spiritual development.  Pirruccello then turns to the Japanese Zen tradition, focusing on Dogen in order to compare and contrast Weil’s views to some of the teachings of this tradition.  She concludes by reflecting on the development of somatic practices that might incorporate aspects of both Weil’s work and the Zen traditions presented. 

Pirruccello, Ann. "Philosophy in the Ten Directions: Global Sensibility and the Imaginary." Philosophy East & West 58.3 (2008): 301-17. Brief discussion of Simone weil and Asian Religions 307-308 

Rozelle-Stone, Rebecca. "Forgiveness Through Attention: Simone Weil’s Critique of the Imagination." Sacred Web: A Journal of Tradition and Modernity 15 (2005): 121- 38. Rozelle-Stone begins with a critical look at notions of forgiveness in popular American culture.  She then raises what she describes as the deeper questions related to forgiveness: "who the offended person is such that she could forgive? or in other words, what conditions must be present for true forgiveness to even occur?"  (p. 122).  To answer these questions, Rozelle-Stone  turns to identify two notions of forgiveness in Weil's work.  After a brief discussion of the first sense pardonner, the pardoning an offense, which she argues we cannot successfully do, she turns to the type of forgiveness we, according to Weil, must do, remettre.    Understanding this second sense necessitates a more in-depth discussion of Weil's thinking on imagination and illusion.  Here Rozelle-Stone argues at some length, Weil's reading of Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist texts influenced her thought. The article concludes with a reflection on the ethical and phenomenological significance of Weil's notion of forgiveness.  

Japanese Works on Simone

I have currently collected over 60  articles in Japanese focussed on Simone.  Key writers include: Junko Suzuki, Hanko Ikeda,  Yoshio Murakami, Mayumi Tomihara  and Shino Matsubara

Great source for Japanese Material

CiNii  is a great source for Japanese articles.  Searching "Simone Weil"retrieved over 100 works.

'the Good'

Considerable discussion of Weil, Grant and 'the Good' in a 2013 thesis by Pingree, Aaron C. "Apathy and the Modern Self: The Afflictions of Modernity and Orientation Toward the Good." Diss. Ryerson University and York University, 2013.