"As George Bernard Shaw puts it, in substance, 'The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.' This vicious circle is met with in all analogous circumstances; when an individual (or a group of individuals) is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he is inferior. But the significance of the verb to be must be rightly understood here; it is in bad faith to give it a static value when it really has the dynamic Hegelian sense of 'to have become'. Yes, women on the whole are today inferior to men; that is, their situation affords them fewer possibilities. The question is: should that state of affairs continue?"

The Second Sex - marxists.org full transcript


Pretty sexy despite hyperexistential smell (i.e. full of Sartrespeak). Think emancipatory argumentation via Hegel (analysis dialectical - reflective subject at the centre) plus cultural use of Marx makes it rather rich though - although essentially Hegelian, 'bad faith', 'authenticty' and 'other' disrupts my teutonic unconscious, a bit like 'is' and 'everything' on acid (if you can hack 'Verwurzelung' and 'Heimat' though...). I have this impression that she was politically motivated in a way that Sartre never was.




Simone de Beauvoir, 1/9/1908 – 14/4/1986 (you'd never guess what tomorrow's occasion for rememberance will be...)