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ix Acknowledgments T he idea for this book emerged during a faculty seminar on Antigone at the University of Northern Iowa and crystallized when Rosemary Johnsen invited me to present a paper on Antigone at an annual meeting of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R). I realized then that ideas I had explored in my book Sacrificed Lives merited further attention. Previously, I had reflected on how René Girard’s mimetic theory enhances Kristeva’s discussion of violence. In conversation with other feminist scholars, I realized that I should develop further the dialogue I had initiated between Kristeva and Girard. Just as I had found that Girard enhances and augments Kristeva’s reflections on violence, I now saw that Kristeva offers key insights that helpfully extend the analytic powers of mimetic theory. Intimate Domain was born of this insight. In multiple venues over many years, my colleagues in COV&R have been highly responsive to this project as I have shared drafts of chapters with them, and I thank them for their support. I also have been sustained in my efforts by the University of Northern Iowa, which granted me a professional development assignment and a summer fellowship to write several chapters of this book. I thank my graduate assistant, Chelsea DeLucenay, for her help, especially for the bibliographic support she provided for the chapters on x Acknowledgments Proust. I offer thanks to reference librarian Jerilyn Marshall at the UNI Rod Library, who helped me track down elusive resources. Because a majority of the books and journal articles cited in this book were made available to me through interlibrary loans, I particularly appreciate the assistance of Rosemary Meany and Linda Berneking in the interlibrary loan department at the Rod Library. Their professionalism and commitment to outstanding service expedited my bibliographic research. That I was able to successfully complete this book I attribute also to my affiliation with the Academic Writing Club, a wonderful online community of scholars who held me accountable for daily writing during the two years I wrote the bulk of this book. Thanks goes to my colleague Susan Hill who, with unflagging optimism, always presented this project to me as “no different than writing a few journal articles.” I express appreciation also to William Johnsen, editor of the Violence, Mimesis, and Culture series at Michigan State University Press, for his support and steadfast belief in my ability to complete this project. I would be remiss were I not to acknowledge that my own family has been indispensable to the success of this project. My husband, Bill, and my daughter, Beth, have been unwavering in their acceptance of my passion for scholarship. I am most grateful to them. I began writing this book shortly after the death of my mother and wrote much of it during the years that my sister, Janalee, and I traveled together once a month to visit my father before he died. The death of one’s parents is a unique rite of passage after which one takes up a new place on a multigenerational continuum. One’s roles as a daughter, sibling, and parent are forever changed by the death of one’s own parents, and one sees everything and feels everything differently afterwards. Reading In Search of Lost Time, Antigone, and The Old Man and the Wolves in the shadow of my parents’ passing opened these works up in ways that I could not have imagined earlier. Demonstrating compassion for others throughout their lives, my parents remain models for me of relationships founded in acceptance rather than rivalry. Their example inspires the hope that pervades this book. An earlier version of chapter 7 was published in Kristeva’s Fiction, edited by Benigno Trigo, and sections of the prelude to part 3 and chapter 8 were published in Philosophy Today.1 ...

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