A materialist reading of Simone de Beauvoir's feminist thinking

• Grant number: 21/02256-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: April 01, 2022
• End date: February 28, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Yara Adario Frateschi
• Grantee: Bruna Mello Gomes Bernardes
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In this research, I propose to take the path of Simone de Beauvoir's thinking from her explicit dialogue with Marx, with the aim of understanding to what extend the historical-dialectical materialism constitutes progressively the beauvoirian feminist thinking through the concepts of situation and ambiguity. To begin with, I'll analise the influence of the distorted english translation of The Second Sex by Howard M. Parshley to the north-american reading of the work, which contributed to the concealment of the materialist bases of Beauvoir's feminist thinking. Then, I'll present Beauvoir's criticism to traditional marxism, elaborated in the young phase of her feminist thinking, in the works The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex. My interest here is to establish the necessary distinction between the materialist interpretation by traditional marxism and Beauvoir's interpretation of materialism with the purpose of explaining in what way the historical-dialectical method underlie the beauvoirian concepts of situation and ambiguity. At last, to demonstrate that materialism is a fundamental basis for beauvoirian feminist thinking, I'll present the influence of the historical-dialectical method to the constitution of Beauvoir's theory of oppression in The Second Sex and in the volume Feminist Writings of "The Beauvoir Series", which constitutes the mature phase of her thinking.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

BERNARDES, Bruna Mello Gomes. The presence of historical and dialectical materialism in The Second Sex. 2023. Master's Dissertation - Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas Campinas, SP.