For Fear of the Fire

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Why are contemporary secular theorists so frequently drawn to saints, martyrs, and questions of religion? Why has Joan of Arc fascinated some of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century? In a book that faces crucial issues in both critical and gender inquiry, Francoise Meltzer uses the story of Joan as a guide for reading the postmodern nostalgia for a body that is intact and transparent. She argues that critics who place excessive emphasis on opposition and difference betray a nostalgia for an imagined, pre-Cartesian time when body and mind are as one. Engaging a number of theorists, and alternating between Joan's historical and cultural context, Meltzer explores the ways in which postmodern thinkers question and gender subjectivity. She argues that the way masculine subjects imagine Joan betrays their fear of death and necessitates the role of woman as other. As such, Joan serves as a useful model of the limits and risks of subjectivity. For Meltzer, she is both the first modern and the last medieval figure.