Introduction: Simone de Beauvoir's Conversions

Penelope Deutscher

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511490507.001

Introduction: Simone de Beauvoir's Conversions

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009

Penelope Deutscher

Show author details

Penelope Deutscher: Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois

Book contents

Get access

Summary

We are adopting the perspective of existentialist ethics. [La perspective que nous adoptons, c'est celle de la morale existentialiste.]

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

We can clearly see Simone de Beauvoir's technique, her métis, her craftiness with and towards the doctrinal philosophy she has accepted. It is a technique of reintroduction which undermines the structure. [D'un point de vue méthodologique, on aperçoit bien ici la technique de Simone de Beauvoir, sa métis à l'égard de la philosophie doctrinale qu'elle a accepté de recevoir: c'est une technique de réintroduction qui bouleverse la structure.]

Michèle Le Doeuff, Hipparchia's Choice/L'étude et le rouet

Unexpectedly, after negligible interest in feminist thought and activism, Simone de Beauvoir wrote in the 1940s a far-reaching work on the condition of women. Two decades later it would prove vital in the upsurge of feminist movements. Though widely considered their watershed text, The Second Sex was likely conceived as a post-feminist work. In 1949 feminism seemed to Beauvoir to have accomplished its main aim of women's enfranchisement – granted in France five years previously – in addition to access to education and employment. If women were still “the other,” Beauvoir concluded that something more was needed: a new kind of analysis.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir
Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance
, pp. 1 - 18

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490507.001 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

The Prime of Life, ed. Green, Peter (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1962), 257.

Beach, Sylvia (Tidd, Simone de Beauvoir: Gender and Testimony [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999], 187Google Scholar

Fabre, Michel, “An Interview with Simone de Beauvoir,” The World of Richard Wright [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985], 253–5Google Scholar

America Day by Day, trans. Cosman, Carol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 237

Old Age, trans. O'Brian, Patrick (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1977), 100

Anti-Semite and Jew, trans. Becker, George J. (New York: Schocken, 1948), 152

Bell, Vikki, “Owned Suffering: Thinking the Feminist Political Imagination with Simone de Beauvoir and Richard Wright,” Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism, eds. Ahmed, S., Kilby, J., Lury, C., McNeil, M., and Skeggs, B. (London: Routledge, 2000), 61–76Google Scholar

Ruhe, Doris, Contextualiser le deuxième sexe (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang GmbH, 2006Google Scholar

Beauvoir, Simone, Old Age, trans. O'Brian, Patrick (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1977), 100Google Scholar

Lukács, GeorgExistentialisme ou marxisme, trans. Kelemen, E. (Paris: Nagel, 1948), 160–98.Google Scholar

Beauvoir, Simone, A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren (New York: New Press, 1998), 135, 138, 140.Google Scholar

Bair, Deirdre, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography [London: Jonathan Cape, 1990], 92Google Scholar

Beauvoir, , Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, trans. Kirkup, James (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1963), 340–3Google Scholar

Galster, Ingrid, Le deuxième sexe de Simone de Beauvoir, textes réunis et présentés par Ingrid Galster (Paris: Presses de l'université Paris-Sorbonne, 2004)Google Scholar

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, “Sartre and Ultrabolshevism,” in The Debate Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, ed. Stewart, J. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 355–447Google Scholar

Simons, Margaret, “Introduction,” Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical Writings, ed. Simons, M. A. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 1–12, 2Google Scholar

Doeuff, Le, Hipparchia's Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, etc, trans. Selous, Trista [Oxford, U.K. and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1991], 137Google Scholar

Fullbrook, E. and Fullbrook, K., Simone de Beauvoir: The Remaking of an Intellectual Legend[New York: Basic Books, 1994]Google Scholar

Doeuff, Le, “Operative Philosophy: Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism,” in Critical Essays on Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Marks, E. (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987), 144–54Google Scholar

Bauer, Nancy, Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophy and Feminism[New York: Columbia University Press, 2001], 1CrossRef Google Scholar

Weiss, Gail, “Introduction to an Ethics of Ambiguity,” Simone de Beauvoir: Philosophical Writings, ed. Simons, Margaret (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 279–88Google Scholar

Langer, Monika, “Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty on Ambiguity,” The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Card, Claudia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 87–106CrossRef Google Scholar

Anderson, Thomas, Sartre's Two Ethics: From Authenticity to Integral Humanity (Chicago and La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1993Google Scholar

, KruksSituation and Human Existence, Freedom, Subjectivity and Society [London: Unwin Hyman, 1990], 86–90Google Scholar

Scott, Joan Wallach, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1996), ixGoogle Scholar

Heidegger, , Zollikon Seminars Protocols-Conversations-Letters, ed. Boss, Medard, trans. Mayr, Franz [Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001], 157Google Scholar

Butler, , “Sex and Gender in Beauvoir's Second Sex,” Yale French Studies 72 [1986], 35–49CrossRef Google Scholar

Sartre, , Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes, Hazel E. [New York: Washington Square Press, 1966], 735–6, 739Google Scholar

Stewart's, (ed.) The Debate between Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1998Google Scholar

, BeauvoirJournal de guerre Septembre 1939–Janvier 1941 (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 362Google Scholar

Secomb, Linnell, “Killing Time: Simone de Beauvoir on Temporality and Mortality,” Australian Feminist Studies 21, 51 (2006), 343–53CrossRef Google Scholar

Beauvoir, , The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Frechtman, Bernard (New York: Citadel, 1976Google Scholar

, HeinämaaToward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 19nGoogle Scholar

Heinämaa, , “From Decisions to Passions: Merleau-Ponty's Interpretation of Husserl's Reduction,” in Merleau-Ponty's Reading of Husserl, ed. Toadvine, T. and Embree, L. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002)Google Scholar

, Merleau-Ponty and , Beauvoir, KruksSituation and Human Existence, Freedom, Subjectivity and Society (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990Google Scholar

Derrida, , “Geschlecht: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference,” in Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger, ed. Holland, N. J. and Huntington, P., (University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 52–72Google Scholar

Book contents

Introduction: Simone de Beauvoir's Conversions

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive