At the Crossroads: Latina Identity and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

Hypatia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-333
Author(s):  
Stephanie Rivera Berruz
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Canonical Text ◽  
Latina Identity ◽  
And Gender

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been heralded as a canonical text of feminist theory. The book focuses on providing an account of the lived experience of woman that generates a condition of otherness. However, I contend that it falls short of being able to account for the multidimensionality of identity insofar as Beauvoir's argument rests upon the comparison between racial and gendered oppression that is understood through the black–white binary. The result of this framework is the imperceptibility of identities at the crossroads between categories of race and gender. Hence, the goal of this article is to explore the margins of Beauvoir's work in order to decenter the “other” of The Second Sex and make known what is made imperceptible by its architecture, using Latina identity as an interventional guide. I conclude that given the prominence of The Second Sex in feminist theory, this shortcoming must be addressed if feminist theorists are to use it responsibly.

Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Individuation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Hengehold
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Other ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World

Most studies of Simone de Beauvoir situate her with respect to Hegel and the tradition of 20th-century phenomenology begun by Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. This book analyzes The Second Sex in light of the concepts of becoming, problematization, and the Other found in Gilles Deleuze. Reading Beauvoir through a Deleuzian lens allows more emphasis to be placed on Beauvoir's early interest in Bergson and Leibniz, and on the individuation of consciousness, a puzzle of continuing interest to both phenomenologists and Deleuzians. By engaging with the philosophical issues in her novels and student diaries, this book rethinks Beauvoir’s focus on recognition in The Second Sex in terms of women’s struggle to individuate themselves despite sexist forms of representation. It shows how specific forms of women’s “lived experience” can be understood as the result of habits conforming to and resisting this sexist “sense.” Later feminists put forward important criticisms regarding Beauvoir’s claims not to be a philosopher, as well as the value of sexual difference and the supposedly Eurocentric universalism of her thought. Deleuzians, on the other hand, might well object to her ideas about recognition. This book attempts to address those criticisms, while challenging the historicist assumptions behind many efforts to establish Beauvoir’s significance as a philosopher and feminist thinker. As a result, readers can establish a productive relationship between Beauvoir’s “problems” and those of women around the world who read her work under very different circumstances.

Is The Second Sex Beauvoir’s Application of Sartrean Existentialism?

1998 ◽  
pp. 68-74
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Simons
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Choice Point ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Élan Vital

Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 feminist masterpiece, The Second Sex, has traditionally been read as an application of Sartrean existentialism to the problem of women. Critics have claimed a Sartrean origin for Beauvoir's central theses: that under patriarchy woman is the Other, and that 'one is not born a woman, but becomes one.' An analysis of Beauvoir's recently discovered 1927 diary, written while she was a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, two years before her first meeting with Sartre, challenges this interpretation. In this diary, Beauvoir affirms her commitment to doing philosophy, defines the philosophical problem of 'the opposition of self and other,' and explores the links between love and domination. In 1927, she thus lays the foundations of both Sartre's phenomenology of interpersonal relationships and of her own thesis, in The Second Sex, that woman is the Other. Her descriptions of the experience of freedom and choice point to the influence of Bergson, specifically his concepts of 'becoming' and élan vital. Tracing Beauvoir's shift from her apolitical position of 1927 to the feminist engagement of The Second Sex points to the influence of the African-American writer, Richard Wright, whose description of the lived experience of oppression of blacks in America, and whose challenge to Marxist reductionism, provide Beauvoir with a model, an analogy, for analyzing woman's oppression.

scholarly journals The Influence of Biographical Factors on Adult Learner Self-Directedness in an Open Distance Learning Environment

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo-Anne Botha ◽  
Mariette Coetzee
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Distance Learning ◽  
Adult Learner ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Education Institution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Academic Activity ◽  
And Gender

<p>This study investigated the relationship between self-directedness (as measured by the Adult Learner Self-Directedness Scale) and biographical factors such as age, race, and gender of adult learners enrolled at a South African open distance learning (ODL) higher education institution. Correlational and inferential statistical analyses were used. A stratified random sample of 1,102 mainly black and female learners participated in the study. The Adult Learner Self-Directedness Scale (ALSDS) identified four constructs of adult learner self-directedness in an Open Distance Learning Higher Education (ODLHE) milieu, namely the strategic utilisation of officially provided resources, engaged academic activity, success orientation for ODLHE, and academically motivated behaviour. The research indicated that significant differences exist between the gender, race and age groups with regard to self-directedness.</p><p>With regard to gender, males scored significantly higher than females on success orientation for ODLHE and engaged academic activity. With regard to race, Indian participants scored significantly higher than the other race groups on strategic utilisation of officially provided resources and engaged academic activity. The white participants scored significantly higher than the other race groups on success orientation for ODLHE. In terms of age, the age group &gt;50 scored significantly higher than the other age groups on success orientation for ODLHE and self-efficacy. In terms of success orientation, the means for the age groups seem to increase as the ages of participants increase. The age group 18-25 scored significantly higher than the other age groups on engaged academic activity.</p>

By Black Women’s Hands: Building Equitable Justice

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-77
Author(s):  
Livia Maria San’t AnnaE Sant’Anna Vaz
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Brazilian Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
System Data ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Social Vulnerabilities

The article evinces the need for the inclusion of Black women in the Brazilian justice system if equitable justice is to be achieved. The intersecting oppressions of race and gender to which Black women have been subjected down through the colonialist, slave-owning history of Brazil are still conditioning Black women’s access to spaces of power, notedly in the Brazilian justice system. Data are presented that illustrate the effects of institutional racism and sexism on justice officials, particularly how the dearth of Black women – the most vulnerabilized social category in Brazilian society – produces a single, white-centric, androcentric interpretation that ultimately makes the achievement of justice a white man’s privilege. From this perspective, Black women find themselves at a kind of intersectional crossroads that, on one hand, reinforces their social vulnerabilities while, on the other hand, it potentializes their ability to foster an epistemological, hermeneutic transformation inside the justice system, aimed at building a system that incorporates gender and race equity.

Trends in Marital Happiness by Gender and Race, 1973 to 2006

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (10) ◽  
pp. 1379-1404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mamadi Corra ◽  
Shannon K. Carter ◽  
J. Scott Carter ◽  
David Knox
Keyword(s):  
General Social Survey ◽  
The Other ◽  
Marital Happiness ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Over Time

This article uses data from the 1973-2006 General Social Survey to assess the interactive impact of race and gender on marital happiness over time. Findings indicate independent and significant effects for both variables, with Whites and husbands reporting greater marital happiness than Blacks and wives. Comparing four subgroups (White husbands, White wives, Black husbands, and Black wives), the authors find that White husbands report the highest levels of marital happiness whereas Black wives report the lowest. Assessment of trends from the 1970s to the 2000s reveals a convergence among the groups: Although White husbands consistently report the highest levels of marital happiness, there has been a steady decline in the gap between all four groups. Most notably, Black wives exhibit a significant increase in marital happiness relative to the other groups. Findings are discussed in the context of the changing structure and composition of families in contemporary U.S. society.

DuBois's “Double Consciousness”: Race and Gender in Progressive Era American Thought

1992 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adolph Reed
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
The Other ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
True Self ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Other World ◽  
And Gender ◽  
American Thought ◽  
Dark Body

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

scholarly journals From gendered organizations to compassionate borderspaces: Reading corporeal ethics with Bracha Ettinger

Organization ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Kenny ◽  
Marianna Fotaki
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational Contexts ◽  
Gendered Organizations ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
And Gender

In this article, we propose a new way of approaching the topic of ethics for management and organization theory. We build on recent developments within critical organization studies that focus on the question of what kind of ethics is possible in organizational contexts that are inevitably beset by difference. Addressing this ‘ethics of difference’, we propose a turn to feminist theory, in which the topic has long been debated but which has been underutilized in organization theory until very recently. Specifically, we draw on the work of Bracha Ettinger to re-think and extend existing understandings. Inspired by gender studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy and art, Ettinger’s work has been celebrated for its revolutionary re-theorization of subjectivity. Drawing on a feminist ethics of the body inspired by psychoanalysis, she presents a concept of ‘trans-subjectivity’. In this, subjectivity is defined by connectedness, co-existence and compassion towards the other, and is grounded in what Ettinger terms the ‘matrixial borderspace’. An ethics of organization derived from the concept of the matrixial suggests that a different kind of ethical relation with the Other is possible. In this article, we demonstrate this through examining the issue of gender in the workplace. We conclude by outlining the implications of this perspective for rethinking ethics, embodiment and gender, and in particular for the development of a corporeal ethics for organization studies.

scholarly journals The Intersection of Racial and Gender Attitudes, 1977 through 2018

2021 ◽  
pp. 000312242110335
Author(s):  
William J. Scarborough ◽  
Joanna R. Pepin ◽  
Danny L. Lambouths ◽  
Ronald Kwon ◽  
Ronaldo Monasterio
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Latent Class ◽  
White Women ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gender Attitudes ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Gender Egalitarianism ◽  
And Gender

Intersectionality scholars have long identified dynamic configurations of race and gender ideologies. Yet, survey research on racial and gender attitudes tends to treat these components as independent. We apply latent class analysis to a set of racial and gender attitude items from the General Social Survey (1977 to 2018) to identify four configurations of individuals’ simultaneous views on race and gender. Two of these configurations hold unified progressive or regressive racial and gender attitudes. The other two formations have discordant racial and gender attitudes, where progressive views on one aspect combine with regressive views on the other. In the majority of survey years, the most commonly held configuration endorsed gender equality but espoused new racialist views that attributed racial disparities to cultural deficiencies. This perspective has become increasingly common since 1977 and is most prevalent among White women and White men, likely due to racial-group interest. Black women and Black men, in contrast, are more likely to embrace progressive racial and gender attitudes. We argue that White men’s gender egalitarianism may be rooted in self-interest, aimed at acquiring resources through intimate relationships. In contrast, Black men adopt progressive racial and gender attitudes to form a necessary coalition with Black women to challenge racism.

Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–86)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Lundgren-Gothlin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Orientation ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Prominent Feature ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Simone de Beauvoir, a French novelist and philosopher belonging to the existentialist-phenomenological tradition, elaborated an anthropology and ethics inspired by Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre in Pyrrhus et Cinéas (1944) and Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté (The Ethics of Ambiguity) (1947). In her comprehensive study of the situation of women, Le deuxième sexe (The Second Sex) (1949), this anthropology and ethics was developed and combined with a philosophy of history inspired by Hegel and Marx. The most prominent feature of Beauvoir’s philosophy is its ethical orientation, together with an analysis of the subordination of women. Her concept of woman as the Other is central to twentieth-century feminist theory.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document