Simone de Beauvoir

Sentada en un bar, mientras Simone de Beauvoir lee mi artículo de la semana pasada, la miro. Ninguna madre burguesa tendría de qué quejarse: la señora Beauvoir tiene una blusa cuidadosamente planchada; está fresca como una rosa, su rostro es terso y limpio, de ella emana un discreto perfume, es verdaderamente perfecta. Su rebelión contra su familia y su entorno, tan bien descrita en las Memorias de una joven formal, no se muestra en los detalles de la vestimenta. No, definitivamente, (...) Simone de Beauvoir no tiene la agresividad "amazónica" al límite. (shrink)

This is a one page handout outlining an interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir which draws heavily upon material from the analytic tradition of philosophy.

In her 1947 book _Toward an Ethics of Ambiguity_, Simone de Beauvoir sketches the outlines of a systematic existentialist ethical theory. This short and startlingly ambitious text purports to offer nothing less than a new way to meet the challenge of moral skepticism with a theory that at once grounds moral normativity and entails certain first-order moral norms. We argue that Beauvoir offers a distinctive and promising version of metaethical constructivism that deserves to be treated as a live option in (...) contemporary debates. Beauvoirian constructivism has much in common with Kantian constructivist approaches to metaethics. It departs from them in that the Beauvoirian existential imperative to will freedom is derived not from rational agency as such but from contingent features of our embodied subjectivity. (shrink)

Humans share many aspects of existence and in Karen Green’s short book on Simone de Beauvoir, published as part of the new Cambridge Elements Women in the History of Philosophy series, she reminds...

This article offers a philosophical reading of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels by bringing the tetralogy into conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology. In addition to highlighting the striking similarities between Ferrante’s notion of smarginatura (‘dissolving margins’) and Sartre’s depiction of the existential sensation of nausea, this article argues that the two main characters of Ferrante’s tetralogy, Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco, respectively exemplify Sartre’s ontological categories of ‘being-for-oneself’ and ‘being-for-others’ in his phenomenological account of human existence. However, Ferrante—like Simone de (...) Beauvoir before her—goes beyond Sartre in her ability to offer an account of the imperfect existential freedom of women, who remain constrained in their pursuit of authenticity by social and cultural factors. Drawing on Ferrante’s assertion that readers ‘are both Elena and Lila’ as well as her recent claim that there are within her two kinds of writing (broadly equated to the ‘compliant’ Elena and ‘impetuous’ Lila), we establish Ferrante’s exploration of the ambivalent features of human subjectivity as a consummate philosophical and literary project. (shrink)

One of the key insights of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex is the idea that gender-based subordination is not just something done to women, but also something women do to themselves. This raises a question about ethical responsibility: if women are complicit, or actively implicated in their own oppression, are they at fault? Recent Beauvoir scholarship remains divided on this point. Here, I argue that Beauvoir did, in fact, ethically criticize many women for their complicity, as a sign of (...) what she called “bad faith”. I challenge recent accounts by Nancy Bauer and Manon Garcia, who both read Beauvoir as exonerating complicit women. According to this reading, women emerge as human “freedoms” within a social world where a “destiny” of inferiority is already prepared for them. Their self-subordination is then an inevitable product of acting in a patriarchal world. I argue, however, that this interpretation generates a crucial tension, leading Bauer and Garcia to call on women to stop being complicit, while also claiming they cannot avoid complicity. I propose instead a different interpretation, on which feminine complicity is often fueled by criticizable ethical attitudes that are far from inevitable. By revisiting Beauvoir’s notion of “bad faith”, I show that this account is compatible with recognizing the limitations imposed on women’s agency and I show that this feminist ethical criticism is itself an important part of a collective project of social transformation. (shrink)

Reading Beauvoir’s descriptions of love in The Second Sex (TSS), one would be forgiven for being pessimistic about the possibility of authentic love. What I will do in this paper is, using Beauvoir’s diagnosis of inauthentic love under patriarchy, construct a set of conditions that an authentic love would be guided by and strive to manifest. I will then defend the importance of Beauvoir’s views by demonstrating its explanatory power. Firstly, I will show how Beauvoir’s account can deal with two (...) common contemporary problems that are often raised as objections against accounts of love that include a moral element. Then, in the third section, I will also show the value of this account by demonstrating its ability to explain why different kinds of love feel differently. The kind I will focus on will be unrequited love; this will be in dialogue with vision-based accounts to highlight Beauvoir’s unique contribution. (shrink)

This paper explores the process of aging from a phenomenological perspective. Supplementing the model of becoming old found in Simone de Beauvoir’s work with a phenomenology of human suffering and flourishing, it asks whether it is possible to lead a good life in the process of becoming old. Is it possible to flourish while experiencing bodily waning? Is it possible to flourish while experiencing the shrinking of one’s everyday world and the passing away of close others? Aging, at least in (...) its protracted phases, appears to become full of suffering rather than flourishing. What are the prospects of finding meaningful life projects despite old age? By making use of insight found in Heidegger and other phenomenologists the paper tries to develop a slightly different view on aging than the one found in Beauvoir, stressing the importance of embodied experiences and life choices, which not only depend upon societal oppression and being objectified by others, but also upon processes of nature and the possibilities of an intergenerational intersubjectivity. Resources for this project is found in the philosophy of affectivity developed by Heidegger and other phenomenologists of facticity, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Taylor, Helmuth Plessner and Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

Trata-se de uma introdução interpretativa ao primeiro livro filosófico publicado por Simone de Beauvoir, Pirro e Cinéias (1944), que inaugura, segundo ela, após a eclosão da Segunda Guerra Mundial, o período moral de sua carreira literária e seu interesse particular em atribuir um conteúdo material à moral existencialista – junto de um livro publicado posteriormente, Por uma moral da ambiguidade (1947). Destaca-se, portanto, que Beauvoir é a autora que vai superar as oposições que separavam a natureza da cultura, o corpo (...) do espírito, a liberdade da facticidade, a subjetividade da objetividade, o individual do coletivo, o particular do universal, de tal forma que sua alternativa será, no ensaio aqui estudado, pensar como as liberdades separadas entre si se reconhecem mutuamente para que o movimento ontológico de uma em direção à outra possibilite uma investigação do vínculo fundamental e indissociável entre os extremos mencionados. Com efeito, nossa conclusão é que Pirro e Cinéias anuncia duas das ideias centrais que esclarecem o período moral da literatura beauvoiriana, que é a individualidade de cada situação vivida, tal como as situações de suas personagens literárias, e o movimento das liberdades situadas em sua própria dimensão: a dimensão humana. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the educational significance of the metaphysical novel, that is, how it can be used to educate ourselves and our students. Mordechai Gordon begins by describing the nature of the metaphysical novel while contrasting it to “pure” philosophy and theory building. Gordon also situates Beauvoir’s insights in the broader context of the ongoing conversation on philosophy and literature. In the next part, he examines Beauvoir’s philosophy of lived experience and compare her philosophical approach to more traditional phenomenological theories. (...) From the analysis of Beauvoir’s philosophy of lived experience, Gordon turns to explore the role that ambiguity, contingency, and complexity play in helping us make sense of people’s lives while drawing on examples from several metaphysical novels to illustrate these notions. He concludes this essay by reflecting on the question: what can the study of metaphysical novels bring to philosophy of education? (shrink)

Dans Le deuxième sexe, Beauvoir affirme que « la femme, comme l’homme, est son corps : mais [que] son corps est autre chose qu’elle ». Apparaît dans cette phrase, comme dans l’histoire de la phénoménologie, l’espace d’une déhiscence au sein du corps vécu. Être son corps n’impliquerait pas que le corps soit entièrement soi – et le corps vécu, dès lors, ne serait plus un corps propre. D’où la question que nous tâcherons ici de déployer : l’aliénation au sein du (...) corps vécu n’est-elle pas la condition même de sa manifestation comme corps matériel? Nous tâcherons, dans un premier temps, de remonter à la source du concept de « corps propre » (Leib) chez les postkantiens, afin de montrer que le corps n’apparaît comme « propre », dans l’histoire de la philosophie, qu’en disparaissant comme « corps ». Ce qui nous conduira, dans un second temps, à interroger la (ré-) apparition du corps dans Le deuxième sexe, et plus précisément dans la description que Beauvoir fait du cycle menstruel. (shrink)

Los ensayos aquí reunidos buscan ampliar el marco teórico de los estudios sobre Simone de Beauvoir en lengua castellana. Además, tienen como propósito fundamental ofrecer a sus posibles lectores algunas ideas para pensar problemas diversos en contextos muy específicos. Algunos de estos trabajos simplemente quieren acercar una mirada general sobre la figura de Beauvoir y sus principales preocupaciones teóricas, otros se sumergen en campos novedosos donde el análisis conceptual busca dar respuesta a problemas urgentes en medio de preocupaciones académicas. Esperamos (...) que la recepción de esta contribución pueda aportar de manera rigurosa a las exploraciones de quienes encuentran en Beauvoir una fuente de comprensión para elaborar sus propias inquietudes. (shrink)

Aunque no puede hablarse en sentido estricto de una teoría moral del existencialismo a la manera de los grandes sistemas y modelos éticos de occidente, sí existen muchos argumentos que respaldan una versión en la cual es discutida la moral tradicional en contraposición a la posibilidad de una moral de la situación apoyada por las tesis más importantes de los existencialistas. Simone de Beauvoir ha elaborado un conjunto de textos donde esta posibilidad es expuesta.

Beauvoir’s The Second Sex stands out as a master class in the accommodation of conceptual and inferential practices to real, objective gender kinds. Or so I will argue. To establish this framing, we will first need in hand the kind of scientific epistemology that correctly reconciles epistemic progress and error, particularly as pertains to the unruly social sciences. An important goal of the paper is to develop that epistemological framework and unlock its ontological implications for the domain of gender. As (...) we will see, the real gender kinds that contemporary social scientists successfully identify and track are very much the same kinds to which Beauvoir was coordinating reference in The Second Sex. The correct identification of those kinds endures as a moral and political priority, regardless of one’s other gender-related normative agenda. (shrink)

I argue that Simone de Beauvoir’s only play Les bouches inutiles reveals the centrality of failure in Beauvoir’s feminist account of political freedom. In recent years, political theorists have mobilized failure to capture the diverse ways of being and doing that stand outside of hegemonic models of political life, with some conceiving of failure as a form of negativity. Negativity, on these accounts, captures an “antisocial” form of resistance by which subjects refuse configurations of sociality in order to achieve freedom. (...) I argue, however, that this form of negativity runs counter to the collective conception of freedom in Beauvoir’s political thought. To make this case, I interpret the play as a performance manqué and demonstrate that the failures that the women encounter in Les bouches inutiles are conditional on responses from the men. This allows me to recover a conception of failure as a form of positive negativity. What Beauvoir does in her literary theory is to conceptualize that same place of negativity, to which men have consigned women, as a place from which women might disclose themselves and their unique situations. Read in this way, failure is both the foreclosure of the space of intersubjectivity between women’s appeals and men’s responses, and at the same time opens ways for women to resist those failures. I then leverage Eve Sedgwick’s theory of the periperformative to show how, by engaging in poetic practices, women re-signify the political meanings of their bodies and become free with and through others. I conclude by stepping outside of the frame of the play to evaluate its recent resignification by contemporary readers. Doing so underscores the point that resisting failure requires ongoing practices of contestation and disclosure by subjects and audiences across time to affirm the collective dimension of freedom in feminist political theory. (shrink)

Trata-se de compreender qual é o estatuto do corpo na obra O segundo sexo, de Simone de Beauvoir, mais especificamente no capítulo 1 do primeiro volume, "os dados da biologia". Se é verdade que a descrição do corpo não é suficiente para definir o que é uma mulher - permitindo à filósofa francesa afastar-se de determinismos e essencialismos -, é verdade também que é um elemento fundamental para a compreensão das mulheres. Assim, tentar-se há demonstrar que, na moral existencialista de (...) Beauvoir, o corpo nem determina nem é esquecido, mas se constitui como sendo, a um só tempo, uma coisa do mundo e um ponto de vista sobre o mundo, facticidade e liberdade, ou seja: ambiguidade. (shrink)

Central to philosophical practice is the application of philosophers' work by philosophical practitioners to inspire, educate, and guide their clients. For example, in Logic-Based Therapy (LBT) philosophical practitioners help their clients to find an uplifting philosophy that promotes guiding virtues that counteract unrealistic and often self-defeating conclusions derived from irrational premises. I will present the argument that Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics can be applied as an uplifting philosophy as per LBT methodology, and therefore has utility for philosophical practice. Additionally, (...) I will propose that Beauvoir’s existentialist ethics, as an uplifting philosophy, may act as an antidote for ideological obsession and ideology addiction. I will also suggest that LBT may be a suitable intervention when challenging the unrealistic conclusions derived from illogical premises in practical reasoning that contribute to ideological obsession, because it can contest irrational beliefs in a way that could mitigate the fragmentation anxiety that often arise when individuals relinquish maladaptive self-object organizations. (shrink)

Central to the philosophical practice is the application of philosophers' work by philosophical practitioners to inspire, educate, and guide their clients. For example, in Logic-Based Therapy (LBT), a philosophical practice methodology developed by Elliot Cohen, philosophical practitioners help their clients to find an uplifting philosophy that promotes a guiding virtue that acts as an antidote to unrealistic and often self-defeating conclusions derived from irrational premises. In this essay, I will explore the existential ethics of Simone de Beauvoir, a French existentialist (...) philosopher, and writer. I present the argument that Beauvoir’s existential ethics, more specifically her articulation of ambiguity, can act as an uplifting philosophy, as per LBT methodology, which could be of value to philosophical practitioners to inspire, educate and guide their counselees for confronting problems of living. I will present my discussion of Beauvoir’s existential ethics in the context of ideological obsession and ideology addiction, which is often supported by the reasoning that underlies the cardinal fallacy of existential perfectionism. I will argue that Beauvoir’s existential ethics could serve as a prophylactic for ideological obsession and ideology addiction. I will also suggest that LBT may be particularly suited when addressing the self-defeating, unrealistic conclusions derived from irrational premises in practical reasoning that may fuel ideological obsession because it could provide a methodology to address irrational beliefs in a way that could mitigate the fragmentation anxiety that may arise when relinquishing maladaptive self-object organizations. (shrink)

A soaring intellectual narrative starring the radical, brilliant, and provocative philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand by the critically acclaimed author of Time of the Magicians, Wolfram Eilenberger The period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of some of history's greatest philosophers. In particular, four women whose (...) parallel ideas would come to dominate the twentieth century-at once in necessary dialogue and striking contrast with one another. Simone de Beauvoir, already in a deep emotional and intellectual partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre, was laying the foundations for nothing less than the future of feminism. Born Alissa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg before emigrating to the US in 1926, Ayn Rand was honing one of the most politically influential voices of the 20th century. Her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged would reach the hearts and minds millions of Americans in the decades to come, becoming canonical libertarian texts, which continue to echo today among Silicon Valley's tech elite. Hannah Arendt was developing some of today's most important leftwing ideas, culminating with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism and her arrival as a peerless intellectual celebrity. Perhaps the greatest thinker of all was a classmate of de Beauvoir: Simone Weil, who turned away from fame to devote herself entirely to refugee aid and the resistance movement during the war. Ultimately, in 1943, she would starve to death in England, a martyr and true saint in the eyes of many. Few authors can synthesize gripping storytelling with sophisticated philosophy like Wolfram Eilenberger. The Visionaries tells the story of four singular philosophers-indomitable women who were refugees and resistance fighters-each putting forward a vision of a truly free and open society at a time of authoritarianism and war. (shrink)

In the last decade, the importance of Simone de Beauvoir’s contribution to 20th-century French philosophy has been beyond debate. However, it can be tempting to read her contributions as the dated beginnings of feminist philosophy, and to believe that her work is only interesting from the perspective of the history of philosophy. To the contrary, this article claims that contemporary philosophers can and should take Beauvoirian philosophy as a source of fruitful insights on contemporary issues in political and moral philosophy (...) by showing the limited scope of two classic critiques of Beauvoir and by defending the relevance of her work for thinking about female submission and the importance of erotic experience. (shrink)

Can the concept of myths, as developed by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, help us to better understand and sociologically examine social inequalities in heterosexual couple relationships? Beauvoir has shown how women are defined as the Other. Her conceptualization of myths plays an important role in the production of asymmetry between men and women. How can we translate these myths, to a sociological micro level to examine couple relationships? We illustrate the feasibility of this approach through the comparison (...) of two qualitative research projects from the 1990s and 2020s with dual-earner couples in transition to retirement. We try to find out how femininity and masculinity are defined in couple relationships, how they relate to each other, and whether asymmetry is at work. What has changed over time and are women (still) defined in a subordinate and derivative way from men? (shrink)

This article considers the recent publications of French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, and offers an overview of contemporary scholarship in Beauvoir Studies. Beauvoir’s canonization in Gallimard’s La Pléiade collection in 2018 is discussed, specifically Gallimard’s choice of Beauvoir’s Mémoires for these first two volumes. Exploring the imbrication of Beauvoir’s philosophy with her own lived experience, the article traces what Annie Ernaux describes as the ‘running threads’ connecting us, namely the ways in which Beauvoir’s legacy is interwoven in our lives today. (...) Surveying recent scholarship highlights the pertinence of Beauvoir’s work to contemporary contexts on issues ranging from sexual violence, subjective agency and female subjugation to emancipatory politics and transnational feminist solidarities. Thereafter, the importance Beauvoir placed on self–Other relations is explored in relation to scholarship on Beauvoir’s epistolary exchanges, the publication of her lost novella Les Inséparables, and on Beauvoir’s philosophy of alterity and old age in light of the pandemic. (shrink)

The French existentialists Simone de Beauvoir and Jean‐Paul Sartre are renowned philosophers of freedom. But what “existentialist freedom” is is a matter of disagreement amongst their interpreters and, some argue, between Beauvoir and Sartre themselves. Since the late 1980s several scholars have argued that a Sartrean conception of freedom cannot justify the ethics of existentialism, adequately account for situations of oppression, or serve feminist ends. On these readings, Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about freedom—making existentialist ethics, resistance to oppression, and feminism (...) coherently defensible. This article identifies four conceptions of freedom in order to clarify the questions of whether and how they disagreed, arguing that some incompatibilist readings of Sartre and Beauvoir conflate or confuse these conceptions in ways that render their conclusions unconvincing. However, there are stronger grounds on which to claim that Beauvoir disagreed with Sartre about morality—and the conditions of its possibility. (shrink)

In her feminist classic The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir refers to ‘the myth of Woman’ to denote images of womanhood that rest upon and reinforce beliefs in a static, feminine essence. This article aims to understand what makes this myth mythical. The author argues that Beauvoir employs the term ‘myth’ to establish a parallel between the way in which modern men relate to women and the worldview of so-called primitives – who she portrays as ruled by a specific, (...) non-rational mode of thought. Beauvoir could thus be read as appropriating an early anthropological discourse on myth, the representatives of which linked myth to non-Western ‘primitive’ societies, while they depicted Western modernity as haunted by its own primitive-mythical past. However, when situated against this background, Beauvoir’s writings on myth are also shown to challenge the very premises upon which this still influential anthropological discourse rest. Whereas the early anthropologists attributed the survival of ‘primitive’ elements in modernity to a defiance of rationality, Beauvoir’s argument suggests that this is better explained by examining how such elements serve the interests of those allegedly rational individuals and groups in power – who she describes as having employed rationality to defend their mythical beliefs. (shrink)

Feminists have always been concerned with how the clothes women wear can reinforce and reproduce gender hierarchy. However, they have strongly disagreed about what to do in response: some have suggested that the key to feminist liberation is to stop caring about how one dresses; others have replied that the solution is to give women increased choices. In this paper, we argue that neither of these dominant approaches is satisfactory and that, ultimately, they have led to an impasse that pervades (...) the contemporary feminist debate. The problem is that both sides of the debate understand women’s complicity in patriarchal subordination as a matter of what women wear and do. Instead, we propose a phenomenological analysis that understands complicity as based in our relations to our clothes. Starting from this phenomenological perspective, we sketch a new relational feminist ethics of dressing. This alternative ethical paradigm cannot yield a simple recipe for how to dress or tell us what garments are off-limits. But it can offer a way to make critical feminist judgements about clothes without veering into a stifling new prescriptivism. (shrink)

Neste artigo, busco elementos conceituais presentes em O Segundo Sexo para a formulação de uma teoria da consciência propriamente beauvoiriana. A sua própria teoria da consciência foi, pode-se dizer, ofuscada teoricamente pelas teses de grandes autores como Sartre, Merleau-Ponty e mesmo Bergson. É claro que não é possível dissociá-los por completo do pensamento de Beauvoir. Apesar disso, pretendo rastrear os elementos conceituais próprios da fenomenologia de Beauvoir. Se há uma teoria da consciência especificamente beauvoiriana ela só pode ser caracterizada a (...) partir de conceitos que compõem a sua análise da condição existencial da mulher, isto é, conceitos como os de socialização e de eterno feminino. Com esses termos técnicos, Beauvoir fundamenta a sua crítica à pretensa impessoalidade fenomenológica que pode ser reconstituída até a fenomenologia clássica de Husserl. Não há, portanto, como pensar uma teoria da consciência satisfatória, sem considerar a desproporcionalidade entre mulheres e homens, no que se refere à constituição da consciência de si. (shrink)

In this chapter, Filipa Melo Lopes looks at incel violence, and argues that the two most common feminist analyses of their actions—their objectification of women or their sense of entitlement to women’s attention—are insufficient. They fail to account for incels’ distinctive ambivalence towards women, namely their oscillation between obsessive desire and violent hatred. Melo Lopes proposes instead that what incels want is a Beauvoirian ‘Other’—discussed by Beauvoir in her chapter on myths in terms of the ‘Eternal Feminine’. For Beauvoir, when (...) men conceive of women as Others, they function as sui generis entities through which men can experience themselves as praiseworthy heroes, but also risk the denial of their so-called exceptionality. Melo Lopes then goes on to give an illustrative analysis of Elliot Rodger’s autobiographical manifesto, My Twisted World, showing how Beauvoir’s analysis of the myth of woman sheds light on Rodger’s racist and classist attitudes and gives us a better understanding of his ambivalence towards women. Beauvoir, according to Melo Lopes, therefore constitutes a powerful and overlooked theoretical alternative to accounts centered on objectification and entitlement. (shrink)

In recent years, online “involuntary celibate” or “incel” communities have been linked to various deadly attacks targeting women. Why do these men react to romantic rejection with not just disappointment, but murderous rage? Feminists have claimed this is because incels desire women as objects or, alternatively, because they feel entitled to women’s attention. I argue that both of these explanatory models are insufficient. They fail to account for incels’ distinctive ambivalence toward women—for their oscillation between obsessive desire and violent hatred. (...) I propose instead that what incels want is a Beauvoirian “Other.” For Beauvoir, when men conceive of women as Others, they represent them as simultaneously human subjects and embodiments of the natural world. Women function then as sui generis entities through which men can experience themselves as praiseworthy heroes, regardless of the quality of their actions. I go on to give an illustrative analysis of Elliot Rodger’s autobiographical manifesto, “My Twisted World.” I show how this Beauvoirian model sheds light on Rodger’s racist and classist attitudes and gives us a better understanding of his ambivalence toward women. It therefore constitutes a powerful and overlooked theoretical alternative to accounts centered on objectification and entitlement. (shrink)

Many Global North contexts are experiencing conflict in feminist discourses between supporters of trans and gender diverse self-identification and self-proclaimed ‘gender critical’ feminists who consider this to undermine feminist goals. We argue that the channelling of contemporary feminist discourse into defensive and oppositional channels has foreclosed the space for more nuanced and future-oriented, utopian thought around freedom from sex/gender, limiting the prospect of developing a coalition of actors focused not on difference, but rather on commonality. Putting classic feminist works by (...) Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone and Luce Irigaray into dialogue, we consider an alternative approach to freedom premised on an ontology of potentiality combined with acceptance of the materiality of the binary gender hierarchy, that nonetheless remains utopian and open-ended, demonstrating the capacity to transcend these impasses and potentially overcome these divides. (shrink)

Judith Butler claims to have based her theory of gender performance on Simone de Beauvoir’s path-breaking idea that one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. However, Butler’s interpretation of Beauvoir’s work departs considerably from Beauvoir’s own expressed view which is that women are shaped by an interplay of femininity (construed by cultural and structural norms) and sexed bodies and that the concept of woman is a mutable one that can accommodate increasing degrees of freedom. In this paper I (...) explore Beauvoir’s theories further, showing how they depart from Butler’s interpretations of them and in the process exploring the contribution that Beauvoir and Butler respectively make towards understanding ongoing gender inequality. Finally, I compare and contrast the role of temporality and the life course in ‘becoming a woman’ and in performing gender respectively, focusing on the figure of the post-menopausal woman in particular. (shrink)

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir diagnoses “woman” as the “lost sex,” torn between her individual autonomy and her “feminine destiny.” Becoming a “real woman” in patriarchal societies demands that women lose their authentic, autonomous selves to become the “inessential Other” for Man. To better understand this diagnosis and how women might refind themselves, I rehabilitate the influence of Søren Kierkegaard and his concept of repetition as what must be lost to be found again in Beauvoir’s account of freedom (...) and, specifically, the liberation of women. Beauvoir offers a dual account of repetition, that of mundane repetition and sacrificial repetition, bringing them to bear both on her diagnosis of women’s oppression and her theorization of our liberation. Sacrificial repetition becomes a temporality for freedom—one must be able to repeat or retake their autonomy continuously toward an open future. For this to happen concretely, Beauvoir insists that we must sacrifice the (racist, classist) patriarchal ideals of the “real woman” and “real man” as we retake our autonomy and reconfigure the meaning of sex difference anew. (shrink)

The conceptualizations of meanings of existence started with the ontological or metaphysical debates in philosophy. Then at the peak of modern times, the school of existentialism dealt with the issue of human existence particularly by citing individual freedom. In all these series of philosophizing, the human being was considered as a singular type entity who thinks and acts in the same way. So, the historical development of philosophical thinking has not brought enough solutions, with regard to the existential issues of (...) human females and other genders. It is through the end of the modern period only, the identities of caste, class, religion, region, ethnicity, gender etc. were taken into serious scrutiny to see the intersectional issues while conceptualizing the ontic status of humans. This article is a look at these aspects of philosophizing in general, and in particular, it analyses the issues of gendered experiences of human beings in cultures. This will lead to examining the meanings of existence for women as a category with reference to the modern writings of Simone de Beauvoir. The possible existence of many genders and the issues in conceiving an essentialist category called woman or man, are being scrutinized in this article through the postmodern writings of Judith Butler. To analyze the experience of genders, this study draws references from various feminist philosophers and concentrates on the existentialist phenomenological writings of Simone de Beauvoir and the deontological phenomenology of Judith Butler. (shrink)