Simone de Beauvoir's the Second Sex

Acknowledged by many feminists as the single most important theoretical work of this century, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) nevertheless occupies an anomalous place in the feminist 'canon'. Yet it has had an undeniable impact, not only on the development of critiques of sexual politics but on twentieth-century western thinking about the concept of 'woman' in general. This collection of six new essays by scholars from the disciplines of French, English literature, history, cultural criticism, feminist theory and philosophy makes a valuable contribution to the task of re-reading and reassessing this enormously influential text for a new generation of feminist readers, and also for cultural theorists, for whom the question of 'the feminine' is at the centre of key debates in philosophy and postmodernity. The contributors provide a significantly new rethinking of the place of The Second Sex in cultural history and of women and representation, the role of 'fictions' and the problem of ethical agency in the work of the leading intellectual woman of this age.

Author: Jeff Wallace
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 03/31/2013
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.47w x 0.72d
ISBN: 9780719043031

About the Author

Ruth Evans is Dorothy McBride Orthwein Professor in the Department of English at St Louis University