scholarly journals Michèle Roberts: Female Genius and the Theology of an English Novelist

Text Matters ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 61-75
Author(s):  
Alison Jasper
Keyword(s):  
Christian Theology ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Female Desire ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Problematic Issue

Since Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex in 1949, feminist analysis has tended to assume that the conditions of male normativity—reducing woman to the merely excluded "Other" of man—holds true in the experience of all women, not the least, women in the context of Christian praxis and theology. Beauvoir's powerful analysis—showing us how problematic it is to establish a position outside patriarchy's dominance of our conceptual fields—has helped to explain the resilience of sexism and forms of male violence that continue to diminish and destroy women's lives because they cannot be seen as questionable. It has also, I would argue, had the unintended consequence of intensifying the sense of limitation, so that it becomes problematic to account for the work and lives of effective, innovative and responsible women in these contexts. In order to address this problematic issue, I use the life and work of novelist Michèle Roberts, as a case study in female genius within an interdisciplinary field, in order to acknowledge the conditions that have limited a singular woman's literary and theological aspirations but also to claim that she is able to give voice to something creative of her own. The key concept of female genius within this project draws on Julia Kristeva's notion of being a subject without implicitly excluding embodiment and female desire as in normative male theology, or in notions of genius derived from Romanticism. Roberts' work as a writer qualifies her as female genius in so far as it challenges aspects of traditional Christianity, bringing to birth new relationships between theological themes and scriptural narratives without excluding her singular female desires and pleasures as a writer. This paper—as part of a more inclusive, historical survey of the work of women writers crossing the disciplinary boundaries between literature and Christian theology over the last several centuries also asks whether, in order to do proper justice to the real and proven limitations imposed on countless women in these fields across global and historical contexts, we need, at the same time, to reduce the Christian tradition to something that is always antithetical or for which women can take absolutely no credit or bear no responsibility.

Beauvoir the Mythoclast

Paragraph ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-104
Author(s):  
Michèle Le Doeuff
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
The Face ◽  
Looking Back

This article argues that although Simone de Beauvoir goes as far as any philosopher in her analysis of oppressive myths, she too creates ‘others’ for herself, such as children who believe in dreams or fairy tales. Beauvoir's The Second Sex appears to make a clear distinction between myths (mythologization) and facts with respect to women's situation. The first volume of her autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, also critiques some of the myths which dominate women's lives; at the same time, the adoption of Simone's mythologies by her younger sister Hélène is presented less as a myth structure than as an eclectic collection of good and bad objects that strives for coherence only in fantasy. Like the Greeks, the young Simone sets herself against ‘the Barbarians’ — to the embarrassment of the author. Myths and mythologies (including religion) are the enemies of philosophy for Hegel amongst others. Yet while Beauvoir is clear about the importance of emancipation from religion, she does not find it easy to situate herself as a philosopher (that is what we have done for her). Philosophy too has acted as an instrument of male domination. Perhaps Barthes's ‘mythologies’ provided a more comfortable framework for the analysis of bourgeois life in her autobiography — which includes a (truly philosophical) crucial element of self-critique. Equally, looking back on her later life, it is striking to what extent she continued to act out bourgeois mythologies of the role of the accepting woman in the face of male infidelity, just as her mother did. Perhaps her ascetic refusal to offer a positive image of a female heroine relates to this problematic relationship to the imaginary, saturated from childhood with mythologies that she wished to reject, and critiqued by the rational philosophical tradition which cannot acknowledge its own use of fiction.

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.

The Attempt to Author the World: How Intellectualism Denies the Individual

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth R. Wheelock
Keyword(s):  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Existential Theory ◽  
Feminist Scholar ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Existential Issues

Although primarily known as a feminist scholar and author of such works as She Came to Stay and The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir contributed heavily to French existential thought. The two writings upon which this paper focuses, The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Woman Destroyed, deal with the existential issues involved in human interactions and personal relationships. The Ethics of Ambiguity, famous as an exploration of the ethical code created by existential theory, begins with a criticism of Marxism and the ways in which it deviates from existentialism. Similarly, the first of the three short stories that make up de Beauvoir’s fictional work The Woman Destroyed follows the French intelligentsia and their similarities and digressions from Marxist and existential thought. In this paper, I seek to analyze Simone de Beauvoir’s criticism of Marxist theory in The Ethics of Ambiguity and its transformation into the critique of intellectualism found twenty years later in The Woman Destroyed. I will investigate Marxism’s alleged attempts to constrain the group it wishes to lead and the motivation behind these actions. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the efficacy of fiction as a medium for de Beauvoir’s philosophy.

Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 2

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
New Research ◽  
Philosophical Questions

This is the second volume in Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, a series with the aim of providing a venue for publishing work in this emerging field. Experimental philosophy is a new movement that seeks to use empirical techniques to illuminate some of the oldest issues in philosophy. It is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and related disciplines, such as linguistics and sociology. Although the movement is only a few years old, it has already sparked an explosion of new research, challenging a number of cherished assumptions in both philosophy and the cognitive sciences. This volume includes both theoretical and experimental chapters as well as chapters that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is divided into three parts that explore epistemology, moral and political philosophy, and metaphysics and mind, showcasing the diversity of work that has arisen as traditionally philosophical questions have met the tools of social science.

scholarly journals The Impact of Rhetorical Argumentation on Achieving the Mastery of Fluency and Accuracy in Communicative Competence: A Case Study of 2 nd Year Students at the University Des Frères Mentouri, Constantine

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Abderrahim Bouderbane
Keyword(s):  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Classroom Interaction ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Procedural Fluency ◽  
Language Knowledge ◽  
Problematic Issue ◽  
Rhetorical Argumentation ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

The present study is a comparison between the impact of rhetorical argumentation and narrating stories on students’ fluency and accuracy in communicative competence. We aimed at evaluating the usefulness and suitability of these tasks, and their efficiency when it comes to teaching fluency and accuracy by analysing the direct effects of the tasks on the indices of fluency and accuracy. The problematic issue in this research investigates the effects of the task rhetorical argumentation, and whether it is an important task that teachers should rely on it in teaching speaking in academic contexts. The sample is composed of 65 students which are divided in between 30 students in the control group and 35 students in experimental group. The data was collected by a test which was used to evaluate three main areas which are: classroom interaction, topic knowledge and language knowledge. The results of the experiment show that there are two types of fluency which are procedural and automatic. Rhetorical argumentation can be used to develop procedural fluency, and not automatic since the task is considered as difficult and students were not familiar with it.

The Problem of Sexist Sense

2017 ◽  
pp. 25-57
Author(s):  
Laura Hengehold
Keyword(s):  
Husserlian Phenomenology ◽  
The Real ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Real Goal

This chapter focuses on the first volume of The Second Sex (“Facts and Myths”) and argues that the real goal of Beauvoir’s text is to prevent the systematic blockage of women’s opportunities for individuation. Like Deleuze’s critique of representation, Beauvoir’s critique of sexist systems of knowledge and politics arose from concerns about the nature of “sense” associated with late Husserlian phenomenology. This chapter also establishes some terminology, asking how a “concept,” a “problem,” “conceptual personae” and a “life” are related in Deleuze’s thought and in Beauvoir’s corpus. The concept of “transcendence” is used as a case study for unpacking these relationships.

A Smart City Remembers Its Past

Crowdsourcing ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 489-516
Author(s):  
Jennifer Minner ◽  
Andrea Roberts ◽  
Michael Holleran ◽  
Joshua Conrad
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Research Team ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Web Based ◽  
First Case ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
The City

Integral to some conceptualizations of the “smart city” is the adoption of web-based technology to support civic engagement and improve information systems for local government decision support. Yet there is little to no literature on the “smartness” of gathering information about historic places within municipal information systems. This chapter provides three case studies of technologically augmented planning processes that incorporated citizens as sensors of data about historic places. The first case study is of SurveyLA, a massive effort of the city of Los Angeles to comprehensively survey over 880,000 parcels for historic resources. A second case study involves Motor City Mapping, an effort to identify the condition of buildings in Detroit, Michigan and a parallel historical survey conducted by volunteers. In Austin, Texas, a university-based research team designed a municipal web tool called the Austin Historical Survey Wiki. This chapter offers insights into these prior efforts to augment planning processes with “digitized memory,” web-based technology, and public engagement.

“Asking the Woman Question” in Case Study Research

2022 ◽  
pp. 640-658
Author(s):  
Nicoletta Policek
Keyword(s):  
Case Study Research ◽  
Woman Question ◽  
Study Research ◽  
Women’S Experiences ◽  
Women's Experiences ◽  
Women's Lives

Case study research provides the researcher with the opportunity to decide the most convincing epistemological orientation. Such versatility is nonetheless embedded in the assumption of objectivity contends G. Griffin in Difference in View: Women and Modernism, which speaks of an “abstract masculinity” intended here as the assumption of universal humanity where men's and women's experiences are melted into one experience. Case study research, this contribution contends, even when about women, hinders the experience of women, an experience that is always situated, relational, and engaged. In other words, ontologically, it is argued here, the reality of women's lives is absent from the domain of case study research because the language adopted when framing case study research is still very much a language that talks about women, but it does not allow women to speak.

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