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Cool Women – The New Inquiry

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When the apparently hard-edged rejection of identity betrays a hidden sentimentalism

In Margarethe von Trotta’s 2012 film Hannah Arendt , the protagonist paces back and forth in her apartment, cigarette in hand. She lectures about the banality of evil amidst a halo of cigarette smoke. She stretches out on a divan in a grey wool dress, eyes closed, perfectly still. She looks as if she were sleeping, but we know that she is thinking, furiously, perhaps about how to mount a defense against accusations of self-hating Jewishness, perhaps about what to serve at her next party. Ever since sitting in the theater watching that scene, I have wanted a daybed of my own. The fantasy of coo

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