In this re-reading of The Second Sex, the author argues that Beauvoir transgressively employs Sartre’s universal binary categories of Being and Nothingnessin her effort to account for the economic, political, cultural and psychological conditions of women’s situation. In doing so, she challenges Sartre’s theory of radical ontological freedom and concretizes his abstract philosophic voice, thereby avoiding their rationalist and voluntarist implications. Contesting Beauvoir’s feminist critics, who saw her as emotionally and philosophically dependent on Sartre and her work as an amalgam of Sartrean existentialism and feminist insights, the author maintains that Beauvoir had her own independent project – to transform Sartrean existentialism to make it contextually sensitive. Distancing herself from Sartre’s theory of freedom and its valorization of masculine experience and disembodied consciousnesses, Beauvoir’s theory of situational freedom and embodied subjectivity draws her closer to the existentialism of Merleau-Ponty.
Beauvoir, Simone de
(1945) ‘La phenomenologie de la perception’, Les Temps Modernes2(Nov.): 366–367.
2.
Beauvoir, Simone de
(1948) Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Citadel Press.
3.
Beauvoir, Simone de
(1955) ‘Merleau-Ponty et le Pseudo-Sartrisme’, Privileges: 187–250.
4.
Beauvoir, Simone de
(1974) The Second Sex,trans. H.M. Parshley. New York: Vintage.
5.
Beauvoir, Simone de
(1987) Force of Circumstance (1944–62),trans. Richard Howard. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
6.
Beauvoir, Simone de
(1988) The Prime of Life,trans. Peter Green. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
7.
Benhabib, Seyla
(1992) Situating the Self. New York: Routledge.
8.
Braidotti, Rosi
(1991) Patterns of Dissonance.Oxford: Polity.
9.
Butler, Judith
(1986) ‘Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex’, pp. 35–50 in Helene Vivienne Wenzel (ed.) Simone de Beauvoir: Witness to a Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
10.
Cixous, HÈlËne
(1981) ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’, pp. 245–264 in Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (eds) New French Feminism. Brighton: Harvester Press.
11.
Cixous, HÈlËne
and Catherine Clement (1987) The Newly Born Woman, trans. Betsy Wing. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
12.
Derrida, Jacques
(1978) Spurs. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
13.
Duchen, Claire
(1986) Feminism in France.London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
14.
Duchen, Claire
(ed.) (1987) French Connections. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
15.
Evans, Ruth
(ed.) (1998) Simone de Beauvoir’sThe Second Sex: New Interdisciplinary Essays.Manchester: Manchester University Press.
16.
Fouque, Antoinette
(1991) ‘Women in Movements: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. An Interview’, Differences3(3): 1–25.
17.
Fullbrook, Kate
and Edward Fullbrook (1994) Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre: The Remaking of the Twentieth Century Legend.New York: Basic Books.
18.
Grosz, Elizabeth
(1994) Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
19.
Hekman, Susan
(1991) ‘Reconstructing the Subject: Feminism, Modernism and Postmodernism’, Hypatia6(2): 44–64.
20.
Irigaray, Luce
(1985) Speculum of the Other Woman,trans. Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
21.
Irigaray, Luce
(1985) This Sex Which is Not One,trans. C. Porter and C. Burke. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
22.
Irigaray, Luce (1993) je, tu, nous, trans. Alison Martin. London: Routledge.
23.
Kristeva, Julia
(1981) ‘Women’s Time’, Signs7(1): 13–35.
24.
Kruks, Sonia
(1987) ‘Simone de Beauvoir and the Limits to Freedom’, Social Text7.
25.
Kruks, Sonia
(1990) Situation and Human Existence. London: Unwin Hyman.
26.
Kruks, Sonia
(1992) ‘Beauvoir, Gender and Subjectivity’, Signs18(1): 89–110.
27.
Lacan, Jacques
(1982) Jacques Lacan and The Ecole Freudienne: Feminine Sexuality,edited by Juliett Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose. London: Macmillan.
28.
Le Doeuff, Michele
(1980) ‘Simone de Beauvoir and Existentialism’, Feminist Studies6(2): 277–289.
29.
Le Doeuff, Michele
(1991) Hipparchia’s Choice: An Essay concerning Women, Philosophy, Etc.,trans. Trista Selous. Oxford: Blackwell.
30.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
(1962) The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Orig. 1945.)
31.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
(1973) The Adventures of the Dialectic, trans. Joseph Bien. London: Heinemann. (Orig. 1955.)
Moi, Toril
(1990) Feminist Theory and Simone de Beauvoir. Oxford: Blackwell.
34.
Moi, Toril
(1994) Simone de Beauvoir, The Making of an Intellectual Woman. Oxford: Blackwell.
35.
Morris, Meagan
(1989) The Pirate’s FiancÈe.London: Verso.
36.
Pringle, Rosemary
and Sophie Watson (1992) ‘Women’s Interests and The Poststructuralist State’, pp. 53–73 in M. Barrett and A. Phillips (eds) Destabilizing Theory.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
37.
Sartre, Jean Paul
(1978) Being and Nothingness. NewYork: Quokka Books.
38.
Sartre, Jean Paul
(1984) War Diaries: Notebooks from a Phoney War, November 1939–March 1940.London: Verso.
39.
Sartre, Jean Paul
(1992) Witness to My Life: The Letters of Jean Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir (1926–1939).New York: Scribner’s.
40.
Sartre, Jean Paul
(1946) Anti-semite and Jew.New York: Grove Press.
41.
Scott, Joan Wallach
(1988) Gender and the Politics of History.New York: Columbia University Press.
42.
Simons, Margaret
(1983) ‘The Silencing of Simone de Beauvoir: Guess What’s Missing from The Second Sex’, Women’s Studies International Forum6(5): 559–564.
43.
Simons, Margaret
(1986) ‘De Beauvoir and Sartre: The Philosophical Relationship’, Yale French Studies72: 165–179.
44.
Simons, Margaret
(ed.) (1995) Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
45.
Singer, Linda
(1993) ‘Interpretation and Retrieval; Re-reading de Beauvoir’, pp. 131–144 in Judith Butler and Maureen MacGrogan (eds) Erotic Welfare. New York: Routledge.
46.
Stavro, Elaine
(1999) ‘The Use and Abuse of Simone de Beauvoir: Reevaluating the French Poststructuralist Critique’, European Journal of Women’s Studies6(3): 263–280.
47.
Tristan, Anne
and Annie de Pisan (1987) ‘Tales from the Women’s Movement’, in Toril Moi (ed.) French Feminist Thought.Oxford: Blackwell.
48.
Walzer, Michael
(1986) ‘Simone de Beauvoir and the Assimilated Woman’, in Michael Walzer, The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books.
49.
Vintges, Karen
(1996) Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of Simone de Beauvoir. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
50.
Weedon, Chris
(1997) Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory.Oxford: Blackwell.
51.
Zerilli, Linda
(1992) ‘A Process Without a Subject: Simone de Beauvoir and Julia Kristeva on Maternity’, Signs18(1): 111–135.
