Clément takes us whirling through the timelessness of syncope, the stop-time of music, literature, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. Examining moments of “syncopation” in the discourses of Plato, Descartes, Pascal, Hegel, and Kierkegaard, the author critiques a classical Western logocentric philosophy that always tries to master any fissure of uncertainty.
Catherine Clément (born February 10, 1939) is a prominent French philosopher, novelist, feminist, and literary critic. She received a degree in philosophy from the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure, and studied under such luminaries as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan, working in the fields of anthropology and psychoanalysis. A member of the school of French feminism, she has published books with writers Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva.