Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil, by Deborah Nelson

A review of Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil, by Deborah Nelson (U of Chicago P, 2018). The review illustrates Nelson's aim, which is to bring six remarkable women into conversation with the present through the shared motif of suffering. The review argues emphasizes Nelson's ambition to re-imagine the critical tradition through the contribution of women intellectual who respond to “systems that fundamentally presuppose a face-to-face encounter with the Other” with another ethical mode that requires sharing the world with others. Discussion evaluates positively Nelson’s interest in thinkers who know, fear, or imagine well what it means to be “terrorize[d] into abandoning thought” (64).