Anonymity and Feminist Identity

Simone de Beauvoir’s Agon and Ours

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

1 227 kr

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Beskrivning

Anonymity is a condition that both intrigues and terrifies us. Such emotions reflect historical inequities of power as well as the limits of human cognition and imagination. How do they affect women’s relationships at the emotional, philosophical, and political level? How might they inflect women’s responses to bullying, economic and academic competition, and even philosophical teaching and writing?Laura Hengehold uses Simone de Beauvoir’s novels and philosophical texts to provide insights into women’s hopes and fears regarding anonymity, while also acknowledging their desire to be recognized in a definitive sense as these particular human beings. In an age of rapidly changing identification technologies, Beauvoir’s works turn our attention to women’s ongoing struggles to individuate from one another and from men, in defiance of the presuppositions that resources and attention are scarce goods.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-06-30
Mått:156 x 234 x undefined mm
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:392
Förlag:Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:9781399545464

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Mer om författaren

Laura Hengehold is Professor of Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, USA. She has published numerous articles on political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of sexuality using perspectives from Continental European and African thinkers. She is the author of The Body Problematic: Kant and Foucault on Political Imagination (Penn State University Press, 2007), Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy of Individuation (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), and co-editor of the Blackwell Companion to Simone de Beauvoir (Blackwell/Polity, 2017). She has also edited, co-edited, and translated works of Francophone African philosophy, including authors Jean Godefroy Bidima, Seloua Luste Boulbina, and Dénétem Touam Bona.

Recensioner i media

The valorization of anonymity is both unexpected and convincing, even in an age of anxiety over mass surveillance and digital masking of identity. The way in which the text opens up a multiplicity of ways of thinking anonymity in a feminist context, drawing on philosophers from Leibniz to Husserl to Bergson to Fanon, and literary figures from Morrison to Atwood to Beauvoir’s own novels, displays the stunning range of Hengehold’s investigation. Anonymity is analyzed with respect to the (Hegelian) fight for distinctness and recognition, considering both its dangers and the opportunities it affords for women and other marginalized groups.

Innehållsförteckning

AbbreviationsAcknowledgements1. Woman and her Doubles2. Mirages of Alterity3. Indiscernible4. Struggle for Recognition5. Useless Mouths6. The Politics of Attention: Multiple Others, Multiple Worlds7. What Can Philosophy Do?8. The Bourgeoise in Her Sunday Best9. Whither Recognition?10. A Life That Has Never Been Only My OwnWorks Cited