Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference

Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir

Bibliographic Data

ID23537726
AuthorsSara Heinämaa (0000-0002-8458-2196, corresponding author)
Year2003
Publication date2003-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueToward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherThe Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5040/9798881818838
OpenAlexW4410668887
ISBN9798881818838
LanguageEN
Citations received17

Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxi_me Sexe has been studied extensively since its appearance in 1949. Through the years, certain passages have taken on prestige; others are seen as unimportant to understanding Beauvoir's argument. In Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference, Sara HeinSmaa rediscovers those neglected passages in her quest to follow Beauvoir's line of thinking. HeinSmaa, like some other recent philosophers, finds that Le Duexi_me Sexe is a philosophical inquiry, not the empirical study it is commonly thought to be. Others who view Beauvoir's masterpiece as a work of philosophy argue it is a criticism not only of Sartrean phenomenology, but of phenomenology as a whole. HeinSmaa thinks differently. She finds that Beauvoir's starting point is the Husserlian idea of the living body that she found developed in Merleau-Ponty's PhZnomZnologie de la perception. So when Beavoir wrote Le Duexi_me Sexe, she was writing not as Sartre's pupil, but as a scholar in the tradition of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.

Epistemology · Phenomenology (philosophy) · Psychoanalysis · Sexual difference · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Philosophy · Psychology

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