Laura Hengehold – författare

Late in life, Foucault identified with “the critical tradition of Kant,” encouraging us to read both thinkers in new ways. Kant’s “Copernican” strategy of grounding knowledge in the limits of human reason proved to stabilize political, social-scientific, and medical expertise as well as philosophical discourse. These inevitable limits were made concrete in historical structures such as the asylum, the prison, and the sexual or racial human body. Such institutions built upon and shaped the aesthetic judgment of those considered “normal.”Following Kant through all of Foucault’s major works, this book shows how bodies functioned as “problematic objects” in which the limits of post-Enlightenment European power and discourse were imaginatively figured and unified. It suggests ways that readers in a neoliberal political order can detach from the imaginative schemes vested in their bodies and experiment normatively with their own security needs.

Winner of the 2018 Choice award for Outstanding Academic Title!The work of Simone de Beauvoir has endured and flowered in the last two decades, thanks primarily to the lasting influence of The Second Sex on the rise of academic discussions of gender, sexuality, and old age. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to her life and writings, an international assembly of prominent scholars, essayists, and leading interpreters reflect upon the range of Beauvoir’s contribution to philosophy as one of the great authors, thinkers, and public intellectuals of the twentieth century.

The Companion examines Beauvoir’s rich intellectual life from a variety of angles—including literary, historical, and anthropological perspectives—and situates her in relation to her forbears and contemporaries in the philosophical canon. Essays in each of four thematic sections reveal the breadth and acuity of her insight, from the significance of The Second Sex and her work on the metaphysics of gender to her plentiful contributions in ethics and political philosophy. Later chapters trace the relationship between Beauvoir’s philosophical and literary work and open up her scholarship to global issues, questions of race, and the legacy of colonialism and sexism. The volume concludes by considering her impact on contemporary feminist thought writ large, and features pioneering work from a new generation of Beauvoir scholars. 

Ambitious and unprecedented in scope, A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir is an accessible and interdisciplinary resource for students, teachers, and researchers across the humanities and social sciences.

Winner of the 2018 Choice award for Outstanding Academic Title!The work of Simone de Beauvoir has endured and flowered in the last two decades, thanks primarily to the lasting influence of The Second Sex on the rise of academic discussions of gender, sexuality, and old age. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to her life and writings, an international assembly of prominent scholars, essayists, and leading interpreters reflect upon the range of Beauvoir’s contribution to philosophy as one of the great authors, thinkers, and public intellectuals of the twentieth century.

The Companion examines Beauvoir’s rich intellectual life from a variety of angles—including literary, historical, and anthropological perspectives—and situates her in relation to her forbears and contemporaries in the philosophical canon. Essays in each of four thematic sections reveal the breadth and acuity of her insight, from the significance of The Second Sex and her work on the metaphysics of gender to her plentiful contributions in ethics and political philosophy. Later chapters trace the relationship between Beauvoir’s philosophical and literary work and open up her scholarship to global issues, questions of race, and the legacy of colonialism and sexism. The volume concludes by considering her impact on contemporary feminist thought writ large, and features pioneering work from a new generation of Beauvoir scholars. 

Ambitious and unprecedented in scope, A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir is an accessible and interdisciplinary resource for students, teachers, and researchers across the humanities and social sciences.

Winner of the 2018 Choice award for Outstanding Academic Title!The work of Simone de Beauvoir has endured and flowered in the last two decades, thanks primarily to the lasting influence of The Second Sex on the rise of academic discussions of gender, sexuality, and old age. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to her life and writings, an international assembly of prominent scholars, essayists, and leading interpreters reflect upon the range of Beauvoir’s contribution to philosophy as one of the great authors, thinkers, and public intellectuals of the twentieth century.The Companion examines Beauvoir’s rich intellectual life from a variety of angles—including literary, historical, and anthropological perspectives—and situates her in relation to her forbears and contemporaries in the philosophical canon. Essays in each of four thematic sections reveal the breadth and acuity of her insight, from the significance of The Second Sex and her work on the metaphysics of gender to her plentiful contributions in ethics and political philosophy. Later chapters trace the relationship between Beauvoir’s philosophical and literary work and open up her scholarship to global issues, questions of race, and the legacy of colonialism and sexism. The volume concludes by considering her impact on contemporary feminist thought writ large, and features pioneering work from a new generation of Beauvoir scholars. Ambitious and unprecedented in scope, A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir is an accessible and interdisciplinary resource for students, teachers, and researchers across the humanities and social sciences.

Winner of the 2018 Choice award for Outstanding Academic Title!The work of Simone de Beauvoir has endured and flowered in the last two decades, thanks primarily to the lasting influence of The Second Sex on the rise of academic discussions of gender, sexuality, and old age. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to her life and writings, an international assembly of prominent scholars, essayists, and leading interpreters reflect upon the range of Beauvoir’s contribution to philosophy as one of the great authors, thinkers, and public intellectuals of the twentieth century.The Companion examines Beauvoir’s rich intellectual life from a variety of angles—including literary, historical, and anthropological perspectives—and situates her in relation to her forbears and contemporaries in the philosophical canon. Essays in each of four thematic sections reveal the breadth and acuity of her insight, from the significance of The Second Sex and her work on the metaphysics of gender to her plentiful contributions in ethics and political philosophy. Later chapters trace the relationship between Beauvoir’s philosophical and literary work and open up her scholarship to global issues, questions of race, and the legacy of colonialism and sexism. The volume concludes by considering her impact on contemporary feminist thought writ large, and features pioneering work from a new generation of Beauvoir scholars. Ambitious and unprecedented in scope, A Companion to Simone de Beauvoir is an accessible and interdisciplinary resource for students, teachers, and researchers across the humanities and social sciences.

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.

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.

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.

Laura Hengehold presents a new, Deleuzian reading of Simone de Beauvoir's phenomenology, the place of recognition in The Second Sex, the philosophical issues in her novels and the important role of her student diaries. Most studies of Simone de Beauvoir situate her with respect to Hegel and the tradition of 20th-century phenomenology begun by Husserl and Heidegger, and often stress the importance of Hegel's struggle for recognition. Hengehold, in comparison, reads de Beauvoir through a Deleuzian lens, and looks at de Beauvoir's early interest in Bergson and Leibniz. Hengehold clarifies the elements of Deleuze's thought - alone and in collaboration with Guattari - that may be most useful to contemporary feminists who are simultaneously rethinking the becoming of gender and the becoming of philosophy.

Laura Hengehold presents a new, Deleuzian reading of Simone de Beauvoir's phenomenology, the place of recognition in The Second Sex, the philosophical issues in her novels and the important role of her student diaries. Most studies of Simone de Beauvoir situate her with respect to Hegel and the tradition of 20th-century phenomenology begun by Husserl and Heidegger, and often stress the importance of Hegel's struggle for recognition. Hengehold, in comparison, reads de Beauvoir through a Deleuzian lens, and looks at de Beauvoir's early interest in Bergson and Leibniz. Hengehold clarifies the elements of Deleuze's thought – alone and in collaboration with Guattari – that may be most useful to contemporary feminists who are simultaneously rethinking the becoming of gender and the becoming of philosophy.

In Africa, the twenty-first century began with new challenges surrounding and regarding philosophicaldiscourses. Questions of economic and political liberation, the displacement of populations and the processof urbanization present ongoing challenges, linked to problems such as endemic diseases and famine, therestructure of the traditional family, gender and the position of women, the transmission of culture frompast to future generations. Changes in labor relations resulting from introduction of financial speculation,cutting edge technologies, and differential access to digital and older cultural forms have placed realdemands on Africans and Africanists working in philosophy.This volume explores the ways in which African philosophies express “transitional acts,” those acts by whichthought interacts with history as it is being made and by which it assures its own renewal in proposingprovisional solutions to historical problems. A transitional act combines both the audacity of confrontationand the novelty of creation, prudence in the face of risks and anticipation in the face of the unexpected.Influential and emerging thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic consider this dual activity in the realm ofcriticism and imagination, public spaces in Africa, and the relationship between historical politics andhistorical poetics.