Beauvoir and Politics

Liesbeth Schoonheim is a post-doctoral researcher (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in political theory at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. Recent publications include "Resistance: An Arendtian Reading of Solidarity and Friendship in Foucault" (2021, Foucault Studies), "Beauvoir and Writing as the Creation of the Self: Memoirs, Diaries, Biography" (2020, Sartre Studies International), and "The ‘Rightful Place in Man’s Enduring Chronicle’: Arendt’s Benjaminian Historiography" (2020, History of European Ideas).Karen Vintges is an associate researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research of the University of Amsterdam. Her publications include Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of Simone de Beauvoir (1992), Feminism and the Final Foucault (co-edited with Dianna Taylor, 2004), A New Dawn for the Second Sex: Women’s Freedom Practices in World Perspective (2017), and other books in Dutch.

“This wonderful new collection features well-known scholars writing on new topics alongside important emerging voices. These essays bring the full force of Beauvoir’s uncompromising insight into human experience and political life to bear on urgent problems facing us today: from the ambiguous lived experiences of aging and pregnancy, to the mobilization of myth, affect, and counter-violence in contemporary political discourse, to the troubling world of the ‘incel’ and the bewildering and terrifying landscape of anti-Black violence and global pandemic. The authors set out, not to reify or rescue Beauvoir as the author of a system, but to think alongside her, to show that the conceptual tools she provides, always rooted in her own experience of concrete engagement, are still, or perhaps newly, ‘good to think with.’ Beauvoir scholars will certainly want to read it; so will anyone working through current debates in political theory, and anyone concerned (as we all must be) with the current emergencies of political culture.”- Meryl Altman, Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies, DePauw University, author of Beauvoir in Time“This lively collection offers a toolkit of Beauvoirian ‘takes’ on political, ethical, feminist conversations about burqinis on French beaches, the expectant anxiety experienced by pregnant persons, women’s experiences of aging and raced embodiment, and more. Its several essays demonstrate the scope and continuing relevance of Beauvoir’s political thought as this diverse group of feminists deepen conversations that began more than a half-century ago.”- Lori Jo Marso, Doris Zemurray Stone Professor of Literary and Historical Studies, Union College, author of Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter“The fine papers in this innovative and timely volume share a focus on activism and nuanced readings of Beauvoir’s life and work that I find deeply sympathetic and welcoming. It has my highest recommendation.”- Margaret A. Simons, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, author of Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism and editor of the Beauvoir Series"This wonderful community of philosophers and political theorists pay appropriate respect to Beauvoir’s thought through not fetishizing but instead engaging its continued relevance for 21st-century social and political problems. Non-reductive, non-totalizing, it is the usefulness of her thought that comes to the fore, the conceptual tools in the kit, which makes this collection nothing short of living thought."—Lewis R. Gordon, author of Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization and Fear of Black Consciousness

• About the Contributors Introduction Liesbeth Schoonheim, Karen Veronica Quirina Vintges Part I: Changing Myths and Feminist Concerns 1. Beauvoir the Mythmaker Adam Kjellgren 2. What Do Incels Want? Explaining Incel Violence Using Beauvoirian Otherness Filipa Melo Lopes 3. Beauvoir, Bardot, and Burqinis: Making Sense of Modern France Catherine Raissiguier Part II: Lived ambiguities and post-colonial conditions 4. Uses of Ambiguity: A Black Feminist Phenomenologist Reflects on Ambiguities in the Year 2020 Qrescent Mali Mason 5. Repossession: The Ambiguity of Decolonization Dana Miranda 6. Love – patriarchal oppression or emancipatory potential? Aspects of feminist love critique Heli Mahkonen 7. Sacrificing Carceral Feminism: Beauvoir, Davis, and Institutional Responses to Campus Sexual Violence in the United States Dana Rognlie Part III: Situated Experience and Embodied Oppression 8. Simone de Beauvoir and the Phenomenology of Racial Oppression Mickaëlle Provost 9. Old Age and the question of authenticity Sonia Kruks 10. Expectant Anxiety Kate Kirkpatrick Part IV: Resistance and Fighting Back 11. “Muscular Revolt”: Resisting Gender Oppression Through Counter-violence Dianna Taylor 12. "I Didn't Ask for It": Women of Former Yugoslavia Vs. The Invisibility of Rape Ana Maskalan 13. The Role of Affective Reflexivity in Political Mobilization Elaine Stavro Index