Semiotext(e) Whitney Series [Kit]

Activist, philosopher and mystic, Simone Weil joined the Free French government in London in December 1942, hoping to be sent on a one-way mission behind the enemy lines. Instead, she was asked to contribute to projects for the reorganization of France after the war. In just a few months, writing night and day, she wrote the book entitled The Need for Roots, her plea for a new civilization, and her most far reaching essay after her Reflections on the Causes of Liberty and Social Oppression, written in 1934 (both of them were published posthumously). During the same period she also drafted a dozen brilliant “papers” dealing with the new constitution, including the provocative and luminous “Note on the Abolition of All Political Parties.” A few months later, in August 1943, she died of consumption and voluntary malnutrition.