The Girl and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex: Feminine Becomings

This article traces the girl in The Second Sex [(1949). Paris: Éditions Gallimard] as a necessary figure for understanding what it means to become woman. I argue that Simone de Beauvoir’s overall significance and philosophical contribution is intimately connected to what she discovered by asking about this moment of feminine becoming. My central contention is that we cannot understand how one ‘becomes’ woman without first/also undertaking the task of understanding the situation of the girl. Drawing on the new translation of The Second Sex by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier [(2010). London: Vintage], I offer a close reading of the chapter entitled ‘The Girl’ with attention to embodiment and temporality. In so doing, I seek to expand and refine our understanding of Beauvoir’s philosophical project in The Second Sex; a project which launched a fundamental challenge to the meaning of being and gave rise to the possibility of a feminist philosophy.     

The Changing Images of Simone de Beauvoir in Norway

Abstract

The ways in which the French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) has been portrayed in Norwegian print media have undergone significant changes since she was first introduced to the Norwegian reading public in the 1940s. But how—and why—did her image evolve? This article explores the interplay between the words and phrases used to depict de Beauvoir in Norwegian print media and her seminal essay Le deuxième sexe (1949) and different translations in Norway. By analysing how de Beauvoir is depicted, I aim to produce a better understanding of her multiple and changing images in Norway, and to show how they may be related to the different translations of her best-known work and to her changing status. The transformation of de Beauvoir—from being considered outdated and dependent on Sartre during the 1940s and 1950s, to being highly valued and recognized as an author and memorialist, significant philosopher, and popular feminist icon at the turn of the millennium—is partly a result of the different translations of her major work. At the same time, it could be claimed that her changing image prepared the ground for the translations.     

The silencing of Simone de Beauvoir guess what's missing from the second sex

Inadequate, inaccurate English translations of works by feminist scholars can slow the advancement of international research in women's studies. We must begin to subject translations to the same critical attention we have focused on those sexist authoring and publishing practices that have defined women's interests as tangential to scholarly research.Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, one of the most widely known, classic essays on women's experience and a cornerstone of contemporary feminist theory, is available in only one English translation from the French. In that 1952 translation by a professor of zoology, Howard M. Parshley, over 10 per cent of the material in the original French edition has been deleted, including fully one-half of a chapter and the names of seventy-eight women in history. These unindicated deletions seriously undermine the integrity of Beauvoir's analysis of such important topics as the American and European nineteenth-century suffrage movements, and the development of socialist feminism in France.Compounding the confusion created by the deletions, are mistranslations of key philosophical terms. The phrase, ‘for-itself’, for example, which identifies a distinctive concept from Sartrean existentialism, has been rendered into English as its technical opposite, ‘in-itself’. These mistranslations obscure the philosophical context of Beauvoir's work and give the mistaken impression to the English reader that Beauvoir is a sloppy writer, and thinker.     

Into history through the back door: The ‘past historic’ in Nights at the Circus and Affinity

This article centres around three ways in which ‘new materialism’ or ‘neomaterialism’—terms coined by DeLanda and Braidotti in the second half of the 1990s—can be called ‘transversal’. New materialism is a cultural theory that does not privilege culture, but focuses on what Haraway would call ‘naturecultures’. It explores a monist perspective of the human being, disposed of the dualisms that have dominated the humanities until today, by giving special attention to matter, as it has been so much neglected by dualist thought. New materialism, a cultural theory inspired by the thoughts of Deleuze, that spurs a renewed interest in philosophers such as Spinoza and Leibniz, shows how cultured humans are always already in nature, and how nature is necessarily cultured, how the mind is always already material, and how matter is necessarily something of the mind. New materialism opposes the transcendental and humanist (dualist) traditions that are haunting a cultural theory that is standing on the brink of both the modern and the post-postmodern era. The transcendental and humanist traditions, which are manifold yet consistently predicated on dualist structures, continue to stir debates that have a stifling effect on the field (think of the feminist polemic concerning the failed materialism in the work of Butler, and of the Saussurian/Lacanian linguistic heritage in media and cultural studies). New materialism allows for the conceptualisation of the travelling of the fluxes of matter and mind, body and soul, nature and culture, and opens up active theory formation. The three transversalities concern disciplinarity, paradigms and the spatiotemporality of theory.     

Act Natural: Dubious Proposals in The Mill on the Floss,The Pastor’s Wife,Vera and Rebecca

Abstract

Following George Eliot, Elizabeth von Arnim showcases a male rhetoric of naturalness. Her men cultivate and punish their women when they resist naturalizing. Without denigrating the intelligence of women, von Arnim shows their unwitting complicity in their subjection. In The Pastor’s Wife (1914) and in Vera (1921), the highly literate women have read the wrong books or missed the unfriendly truths about relationships in those they have read. The husbands and lovers make shallow use of philosophical and scientific reasoning to justify their control and enforce female uniformity deemed ‘natural’. Darwin is misappropriated by the tyrannical Wemyss: evolutionary theories support his imperious dismissal of Lucy’s aunt and friends. Wemyss’s most monstrous actions suggest an atavistic patriarchal dominance like the hereditary reversion theorized by Samuel Butler as unconscious memory. Wemyss brings up the issue of England’s inheritance, and a disturbing vision dawns as the philistine and self-appointed natural man subdues Lucy. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938) follows Vera’s plot, but it does not interrogate naturalness in the same way. Entrapped in her husband’s vision of a natural woman, the narrator registers Rebecca’s wild transgressiveness as more powerful and universal than her own tamed naturalness.     

Hearts and Minds: War Neurosis and the Politics of Madness in Anna Kavan's I Am Lazarus

Abstract

Anna Kavan's fictional portrayals of psychiatric breakdown and its treatment provide a unique perspective on the patient's experience of early to mid twentieth-century psychiatry. This article looks in detail at Kavan's time working with soldiers suffering from effort syndrome during the Second World War, observing how the solider-psychiatric patient becomes a figurehead for her radical politics in her Horizon article ‘The Case of Bill Williams’ (1944), and a prominent protagonist in her stories. Through close reading of her correspondence, her journalism and her wartime stories collected in I Am Lazarus (1945), it examines how the intersection of psychological trauma and physiological symptoms characteristic of effort syndrome surfaces in Kavan's writing of this period and in her own psychic responses to the war. It observes the importance of figurative language to her portrayal of war trauma and psychological breakdown, as her characters embody metaphor in their psychosomatic symptoms, and explores a twisted reconception of mind–body dualism prevalent throughout her writing of this period. It goes on to examine how the peculiar interaction of the physical and the psychological extends to the relationship between Kavan's characters and their external environment in her Blitz stories. Against the backdrop of the war-torn city, mind and body engage in ongoing conflict, affect and emotion bleed into her physical landscapes, and everyday objects become animated and hostile towards her protagonists.     

The ‘Facts’ of Life?

Taken together, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience combine to provide a compelling heuristic account of sex/gender differences. In this article, I explore how the meta-theoretical framework provided by evolutionary psychology provides support for a reading of sex/gender effects in neuropsychological research that sees these as evidence of a ‘hardwired’ neurobiological basis for sex/gender. I discuss the resistance of these ‘hardwired’ accounts to arguments that—like other neuropsychological phenomena—sex/gender could be theorised in terms of experience-dependent neuroplasticity. I conclude that the evolutionary-neuropsychology heuristic obtains much of its appeal from the apparently ‘scientific’ evidence it provides for understanding sex/gender as a ‘natural’ rather than ‘sociocultural’ phenomenon—a view which is aligned with postfeminist ideologies of sex/gender in the contemporary west.     

The makings of a man: social generational masculinities in Bangladesh

Abstract

The emergence of specific forms of masculinity is bounded by space and time. While attention has been given to the contexts within which forms of masculinity develop, rather less is known about men’s enactment of masculinity from a social generational perspective. To address this gap, insights from Mannheim’s work on social generations, and Connell’s notions of masculinity are drawn upon to advance understanding of social generational masculinities in modern-day Bangladesh. A multi-site cross-sectional study was conducted in three cities, using interviews to elicit narratives of masculinity from 34 men of three social generations: an older generation (aged 53–75 years and growing up in the 1950s and 1960s), a middle generation (aged 30–46 years and growing up in the 1980s), and a younger generation (aged 19–27 and growing up post-1995). Thematic analysis was used to identify key notions around what it meant to be a man. While all men subscribed to the view that ‘real’ men should be providers, they differed by social generation with respect to perspectives on work, religion and sexuality. Historical, economic and cultural changes across the generations have shaped these differences, highlighting the importance of a social generational perspective for understanding masculinities in Bangladesh.     

“Buying brains and experts”: British coal owners,regulatory capture and miners’ health, 1918 – 1946

This article examines British coal owners’ use of medical and scientific knowledge of occupational lung diseases in the mining industry to resist regulatory changes between 1918 and 1946. It explores the strategies deployed by coal owners in response to scientific and lay debates over the hazard to workers’ health presented by dust, and legislation to compensate miners for pneumoconiosis and silicosis contracted in the nation’s collieries. In particular, it investigates coal owner deployment of the views of notable scientists, especially the eminent physiologist John Scott Haldane (1860–1936), who insisted on the harmlessness of coal dust, in order to avoid costly compensation payments, as well as capital investment in ameliorative measures to reduce miners’ exposure to such hazards. In so doing, the article provides new insights by illustrating how coal owners influenced mining education programmes, deploying the arguments of Haldane and others, with direct implications for health and safety in British mines. This contributed to the mounting public health disaster wrought by coal dust on Britain’s mining communities. This process is viewed as part of the broader political activities of the coal owners – and their industry body, the Mining Association of Great Britain – in its attempts to influence the regulatory process in a period of dramatic change in the political economy of coal.     

Body and Self: learning to be modern in 1920s–1930s Britain

Observing the divergent tracks taken by historians of the ‘modern self’ and those of the ‘modern body’ the article focuses on health and fitness movements in Britain, c.1920s–1930s. Asking whether there is a place for the body in the history of women performing ‘the self’ in this context, the article suggests a way in which contemporaries found a way to have a ‘self’ in the body. Contemporary notions of the body emphasised its interdependence with ‘the mind’, health and happiness being functions of each other. In the language of health and beauty was a language of inner vitality and outer radiance, a modern formulation of the individual as a ‘self’ equipped to embrace the exciting but uncertain possibilities of the ‘modern world’. Popular print culture on ‘healthy living’, reports by the BMA and the National Fitness Council are considered along with more extensive discussion of the Women's League for Health and Beauty founded in 1930 by Mollie Bagot Stack and inherited by her daughter, Prunella, ‘Britain's Perfect Girl’, in 1935.     

Making It Up with the Motherland: Revision and Reconciliation in Edna O'Brien's The Light of Evening

This article explores the relationship between the Irish woman writer and exile and return in Edna O'Brien's recent novel The Light of Evening (2006). This work, dedicated as it is ‘To my mother and my motherland’, represents a new chapter in O'Brien's configuration of the connection between the Irish woman writer and the image of Ireland as a place from which escape is a necessary step towards creative freedom. The Light of Evening contains a web of subtle allusions that invite a reading of the novel as a statement of O'Brien's allegiances with the English and Irish literary traditions. Ultimately, however, it foregrounds the quotidian world of the main character's home place—one represented fully in her mother's letters—as the key source of inspiration for the Irish woman writer. The article examines how relationships with the literary past are mapped onto familial ties in the novel, as O'Brien seems to move away from the Joycean promise of creative exile towards a more hopeful reading of the relationship between the Irish woman writer and her ‘motherland’.     

Authenticity of self‐expression: Reinterpretation of female independence through the writings of simone de beauvoir

Based on the autobiographical writings of Simone de Beauvoir, this paper reinterprets the concepts of “dependency” and “independence” with respect to women's experiences. De Beauvoir, considered a strong and independent woman, continuously struggled for emotional independence, a struggle which she conceived as being against the need that drove her “impetuously toward another person”. However, a careful examination of de Beauvoir's inner voice as it is reflected in the subtext of her autobiographical writings, suggests that her true struggle revolves around a desire for authentic expression of her feelings and needs — rather than for separation from others.

As an adolescent de Beauvoir was caught between the expectations of her parents and her own needs, remaining the “dutiful daughter” at the expense of being false to her own self. This pattern of dependency reappears in her adult life, when she seems to be incapable of validating her feelings of jealousy and anger in her relationship with Sartre. Her means of coping with this problem is by giving it a literary expression, hence, she seems to gain a sense of freedom and independence by giving her repressed feelings an authentic outlet.

The re‐reading of de Beauvoir's autobiography in a new light of feminist criticism reveals a concept of dependency different from the need to rely on, receive help from, and be influenced by another. When one examines the meanings of dependency and independence through the female language of connectedness and women's values of care and involvement, the essential meaning of dependency shifts from the lack of self‐reliance to suppression of self‐expression, and from struggles for separation to struggles for one's personal truth and for authenticity in one's relations with others.     

Dreams by Day and Night: Kant,Freud and Ella Freeman Sharpe

Abstract: The poet and novelist Mathilde Blind (1841–96) is known to have been influenced by evolutionary theory, particularly in her epic poem The Ascent of Man (1889). However, critics have not yet noted the extent to which her depictions of the courtship plot in her less overtly evolutionary writings are indebted to Darwin's representations of animal mating rituals. Although Darwin's commentary on patterns of relationships in the animal world often reinforced stereotypes of masculine aggression and feminine coyness, feminist writers, including Blind, shifted the focus onto creatures, such as birds and spiders, whose mating behaviour disrupts these stereotypes. This article examines four pieces in which Blind re-imagines the courtship plot by applying imagery of other species to human relationships: her poems ‘The Song of the Willi’ (1871), The Heather on Fire (1886) and ‘The Teamster’ (1889), and her novel Tarantella (1885). By rewriting the courtship plot in this way, Blind contests the idea that middle-class gender relations are sanctioned by the natural world and highlights the variety of possible gender roles found in other species.     

In search of Simone de Beauvoir: A review essay

Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir. The Making of an Intellectual Woman. 324 pp. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994.

Margaret A. Simons, ed., Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir. 324 pp. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

Eva Lundgren‐Gothlin, Sex and Existence. Simone de Beauvoir's “The Second Sex” (English text revised from Kön och Existens, 1991). 329 pp. London: Athlone, 1996.     

Chōra/Chōros: Samuel R. Delany and the masculine semiotic in Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (2012)

Julia Kristeva’s idea of the semiotic chōra continues to haunt gender, literary, and political theory and practice. Reaching what some might consider its controversial climax in the early to middle 1990s – following its introduction in La revolution du langage poétique – the fate of the chōra was left mainly with Judith Butler’s deconstruction of Kristeva’s use of the term in Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. Respectively Butler argues: (a) ‘Kristeva restricts herself to an exclusively prohibitive conception of the paternal law, [and] is unable to account for the ways in which the paternal law generates certain desires in the form of natural drives’ and (b) ‘Kristeva insists upon [the] identification of the chora with the maternal body.’ The present article seeks to resurrect this debate with a critique of Kristeva’s as well as Butler’s position regarding the chōra; my argument is twofold: (i) Kristeva is guilty of being unable to account for the generative capacity of the paternal law and (ii) Kristeva’s use of the semiotic chōra does indeed resonate uncomfortably close to certain frequencies of essentialism in gender theory; however, both criticism can be overcome by adding chōros, the masculine form of chōra, to Kristeva’s theoretical lexicon. In order to sketch out the implications for gender, literary, and political theory and practice I turn to American author and critic Samuel R. Delany’s Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders.     

Feelings are “patterns in the weave of our life” 1 – not a basis for a feminist epistemology

Feelings (or “emotions”) have frequently been debated in feminist theory. A large part of this discussion can be considered to aim at a “rehabilitation of the emotions”. However, when feminist theorists make epistemological claims concerning “emotions”, i.e. what philosophy of mind calls “mental states”, we run a grave risk of ending up in subjectivism and thus of reiterating the “private access fallacy” of traditional epistemology. Starting from the feeling of shame (a paradigm for a socially constructed feeling), this article makes a Wittgensteinian reading of “emotions” which offers an alternative to the atomistic, mentalistic and episodical view of mainstream philosophy of mind. Wittgenstein's thrust against foundationalism, his conceptual remarks about “inner experiences”, his anti‐behaviourism and his emphasis on the primacy of action, are all concordant with the social constructionism of the slogan “The personal is political”.     

‘What is it about “fuck off” you don’t understand?’ The NILRC and politics of the Left in Northern Ireland

Abstract

At the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly Election, a somewhat peculiar political ‘party’ hastily filled in nomination papers at the 11th hour. This last-minute concoction was elaborately named ‘The Northern Ireland Labour Representation Committee’. This article seeks to explore the circumstances around the creation of the NILRC, thereby developing a synthesis of the present-day situation of the Labour Party in Northern Ireland (LPNI), the local Constituency Labour Party (CLP) of the UK Labour Party. In a backdrop in which UK Labour does not stand for elections in Northern Ireland, this article engages with the LPNI’s rationale and raison d’être, followed by a discussion of the NILRC experiment of 2016. The LPNI–NILRC case carries resonances and insights of interest to political groups of the left operating in deeply divided societies.     

马克思劳动时间观的经济伦理透析

马克思劳动时间观从现实的人出发,凝聚经济伦理内核;面向生活世界,形成经济伦理向度;通过冷峻的现实揭露,对资本主义社会进行深刻的经济伦理批判;以辩证的逻辑演绎,体现出科学的经济伦理思维;通过时空交融的探索,对劳动时间予以经济伦理认知,实现了对以往劳动时间理论的经济伦理超越,因而能够从经济生活事实中揭示资本的伦理冲突和道德形态,具有丰富的经济伦理内涵。从经济伦理角度解析马克思劳动时间观,可以揭示马克思劳动时间观所固有的属人的价值禀赋和经济伦理特质,呈现马克思劳动时间观的真实性态。     

Evolution and Gender

Dupre´ considers recent attempts to explain gendered difference in human behaviour by an appeal to evolutionary theory, particularly in the context of the recent programme of 'evolutionary psychology'. It argues that the fundamental assumptions of this programme are unsupported and implausible, and the attempt it offers of providing a universal account of human behaviour does little or nothing to counter the prima facie diversity of gender difference. A more sophisticated understanding of evolutionary theory suggests that we should see gender as developing out of a complex and variable cascade of interactions between biology and environment, rather than as the expression of species-wide biological universals.