this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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de Beauvoir? You mean the famous feminist (and possible Marxist)?
Indeed she is. Though that didn't stop some communists criticizing her for her individualistic bourgeois philosophy.
Her work was also presaged or done better by communist authors who themselves were female as well but none of the communist books really struck it big.
Her's did though.
Still, whatever one may think, she did support the May '68 protest movement, which many famous French philosophers never did...
The importance of her book is in the breakthrough it accomplished in deconstructing the millenia-old patriarchal/paternalistic logic which indiscriminately governed (Western) society. So it definitely merits its critical acclaim.
By the way, she supported the PRC since its establishment and visited China in the fifties. She wrote an investigative book about her visit entitled The Long March.
Yeah, but she was more of a "Maoist" type (before Gonzalo).
I'm not sure if she was a Marxist. Her chapter on historical materialism and Engels in The Second Sex is… problematic.
Oh boy.
Go on… I'm happy to be wrong. I only read that chapter but I wasn't overly impressed.
No, I wasn't doubting you; I said "Oh boy" because it's such a pity and I can only imagine what the author took issue with Engels on, considering that he's something of a punching bag even among Marxists.
Oh, I see. That's one of those phrases that can mean a lot of things! When I get time, I'll have another look and see what the beef was.
If you're curious to know, she argues, unlike Engels in his Origin of the Family, that the rise of private property and the social relations of production are a useful yet insufficient explanation for women's servitude.
According to her, the women's material (physiological) incapacity in the production process constitute an inherent disadvantage only if viewed through a certain perspective (e.g. historical materialism). In other words, women's alterity isn't intrinsic to her biological sex, but rather the consequence of the imperialist human consciousness which seeks to objectively accomplish its sovereignty.
Basically, the classical doctrines of Marxism are based on a modernist tradition which seeks to uncover "objective truths" which conflict with de Beauvoir's deconstructionist portrayal of women's conditioning in the West.
I see.