{"id":573,"date":"2020-03-11T13:53:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T13:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/?p=573"},"modified":"2020-03-11T13:53:01","modified_gmt":"2020-03-11T13:53:01","slug":"soniakruks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/2020\/03\/11\/soniakruks\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonia, Kruks. \u201cSimone De Beauvoir: Engaging Discrepant Materialisms.\u201d\u00a0New Materialisms : Ontology, Agency, and Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sonia, Kruks. \u201cSimone De Beauvoir: Engaging Discrepant Materialisms.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>New Materialisms : Ontology, Agency, and Politics<\/i>, Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 258\u2013280.<\/h2>\n

The larger theoretical trend that Kruks<\/em><\/strong> draws our attention to is Simone de Beauvoir working in and across both phenomenology and a Marxist-inflected culturally oriented structuralist materialism. While Beauvoir is often read as phenomenology, she clearly has \u201cearly\u201d Marxist influences. Beauvoir is a Marxist feminist. This can be seen in her work, one example being her commentary \u2018\u2018One could not state it better, \u2019after quoting Marx (260). Kruks states that Beauvoir\u2019s \u201cself-proclaimed affinity with Marx should make us pause\u201d because \u201cit should remind us that volume 1 of The Second Sex (\u2018\u2018Facts and Myths\u2019\u2019) focuses on the \u2018\u2018production\u2019\u2019 of woman as man\u2019s inferiorized other\u201d (260). The reason why Kruks claim that Beauvoir\u2019s work has both phenomenology and Marxist influences is troubling is because the beginning of phenomenology is the reassertion of subjectivity while the beginning of Marxism is the attack upon subjectivity. However, Marxism and phenomenology are not completely opposed, as there are phenomenological themes in the origins of Marxism. For example, the concept of \u201cReification\u201d, which is the materialization of human activity, is influenced by Edmund Husserl\u2019s phenomenology and reification of consciousness. We have seen the relationship between phenomenology, Marxism and rhetoric. Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.\u00a0The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object (phenomenology). The concept phenomenologyand the relationship to rhetoric can be seen through object-oriented ontology (OOO). We saw this in previous works we read, including Vealey and Layne (2018), who leverage Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) to \u201cseek to reinstate a sense of \u201cthingness\u201d to many objects that litter and make up the world, particularly in a way that is not exclusively tethered to human modes of access, use or meaning\u201d (55). Barad (2008) discusses \u201cthingification\u201d, which is turning relations into \u201cthings\u201d and \u201centities\u201d thereby affecting how we understand our relationship to the world (130). To answer the question, \u201cWould rhetoric benefit from engaging this trend?\u201d consider how Jacqueline Jones Royster and Gesa E. Kirsch (2012) call on feminist rhetorics scholars to be \u201cdeliberate about developing and sustaining throughout the analytical process a more conscious and explicit habit of thinking about our work as part of, rather than disconnected from, other rhetorical enterprises around the world\u201d (53). In this manner, feminist rhetorics could greatly benefit from both phenological and Marxist influences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Engaging Discrepant Materialisms<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another genre of \u2018\u2018materialist\u2019\u2019 theory, one broadly informed<\/p>\n

by poststructuralism, focuses on the production<\/p>\n

of \u2018\u2018material\u2019\u2019 bodies, or their \u2018\u2018materialization,\u2019\u2019 through<\/p>\n

discourse and discursively constituted performance.<\/p>\n

What both of these<\/p>\n

genres have in common, however, is that they proceed (to borrow the<\/p>\n

terms from Elizabeth Grosz) \u2018\u2018from the outside in\u2019\u2019 rather than \u2018\u2018from the<\/p>\n

inside out.\u2019\u2019\u2265 That is, they emphasize the ways in which subjectivity arises<\/p>\n

as the reflex or expression of social practices, or as the e\u221aect of discourses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Debates about \u2018\u2018biological essentialism\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

versus \u2018\u2018social constructionism,\u2019\u2019 about \u2018\u2018sex\u2019\u2019 versus \u2018\u2018gender,\u2019\u2019 or about<\/p>\n

whether to \u2018\u2018displace\u2019\u2019 one of these terms by the other or to \u2018\u2018destabilize\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

both have waxed furious. In this essay I propose, through returning to the<\/p>\n

EBSCOhost – work of Simone de Beauvoir, that these discrepant genres of materialist<\/p>\n

theorizing may be brought into a more fruitful relationship than their<\/p>\n

respective proponents are apt to pursue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Simone de Beauvoir – phenomenology,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beauvoir does not work exclusively in this tradition. Rather,<\/p>\n

she works in and across the interstices between phenomenology and a<\/p>\n

Marxist-inflected and also a culturally oriented structuralist materialism<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018\u2018Physiological facts,\u2019\u2019 Beauvoir<\/p>\n

insists, have significance only within specific social contexts so that, for<\/p>\n

example, the relative \u2018\u2018weakness\u2019\u2019 of women\u2019s muscles \u2018\u2018is revealed as such<\/p>\n

only in the light of the ends man proposes, the instruments he has available,<\/p>\n

and the laws he establishes.\u2019\u2019\u221e\u222b Similarly, Beauvoir argues, menstruation<\/p>\n

is an involuntary bodily function (an \u2018\u2018alien vitality\u2019\u2019) to which most<\/p>\n

women must attend in one way or another, but the disgust and shame that generally accompany its onset in young girls is integral to their realization<\/p>\n

of their subordinate social status (315).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For Beauvoir, the particular problem of \u2018\u2018becoming a woman\u2019\u2019 is that<\/p>\n

one is always engaged in a project in which one\u2019s potentialities as a free,<\/p>\n

agentic human being can never escape the facticities of one\u2019s organic body<\/p>\n

and other life-attributes, including a discursive and social regime through<\/p>\n

which one is subjected to systematically inferiorized otherness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

However, working from a perspective more inflected by Marxism than is<\/p>\n

Moi\u2019s, Young argues that we need to think more systematically about the<\/p>\n

\u2018\u2018structures of constraint\u2019\u2019 that operate independently of the individual<\/p>\n

intentions of either men or women (21). Without<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Second Sex is not only a<\/p>\n

phenomenology of the lived experience of women\u2019s oppression, for Beauvoir<\/p>\n

is also concerned with questions about how that oppression is perpetuated<\/p>\n

through social structures, institutions, and practices that women<\/p>\n

must engage with as the \u2018\u2018givens\u2019\u2019 of their lives. \u2018\u2018Yes,\u2019\u2019 she writes, \u2018\u2018women<\/p>\n

on the whole are today inferior to men, that is,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a for-profit economy<\/p>\n

those who are no longer economically productive cease to be valued, and a<\/p>\n

prior life of alienated labor produces old people who have no existential<\/p>\n

resources to enjoy the enforced \u2018\u2018leisure\u2019\u2019 of retirement. Indeed, with<\/p>\n

strong echoes of Marx\u2019s notion of the proletariat as a universal class,<\/p>\n

Beauvoir ends Old Age by suggesting that the treatment of the aged \u2018\u2018exposes<\/p>\n

the failure of our entire civilization.\u2019\u2019 More generous pensions and<\/p>\n

so forth\u2014although she demands them\u2014would not be su\u2248cient to make<\/p>\n

old age meaningful for most: \u2018\u2018It is the whole system that is at issue and<\/p>\n

our claim cannot be otherwise than radical\u2014change life itself \u2019\u2019 (543<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beauvoir\u2019s self-proclaimed a\u2248nity with Marx should make us pause.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beauvoir\u2019s self-proclaimed a\u2248nity with Marx should make us pause.<\/p>\n

It should remind us that volume 1 of The Second Sex (\u2018\u2018Facts and Myths\u2019\u2019)<\/p>\n

focuses on the \u2018\u2018production\u2019\u2019 of woman as man\u2019s inferiorized other. It<\/p>\n

explores the social production of woman\u2019s otherness across the history of<\/p>\n

human practices and institutions, as well as in more discursive arenas such<\/p>\n

as myth and literature.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Beauvoir\u2019s attention to Marx also invites a reading of The Second Sex as a precursor to the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), the neo-Marxist<\/p>\n

magnum opus of Sartre\u2019s later years\u03a9\u2014a reading I develop below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Indeed, this is where she explicitly locates herself in The Second Sex and her project, especially in the second volume, is to present a phenomenology of the \u2018\u2018lived experience\u2019\u2019 through which, as she famously puts it, \u2018\u2018one is not born but becomes a woman.\u2019\u2019 Furthermore, qua existentialist, she is concerned with exploring the constraints on and possibilities for freedom that accompany such a \u2018\u2018becoming.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In qualitative\u00a0phenomenological<\/strong>\u00a0research,\u00a0lived experience<\/strong>\u00a0refers to a representation of the\u00a0experiences<\/strong>\u00a0and choices of a given person, and the knowledge that they gain from these\u00a0experiences<\/strong>\u00a0and choices.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Phenomenology<\/strong>\u00a0as a methodological\u00a0framework<\/strong>\u00a0has evolved into a process that seeks reality in individuals’ narratives of their lived experiences of phenomena<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sonia, Kruks. \u201cSimone De Beauvoir: Engaging Discrepant Materialisms.\u201d\u00a0New Materialisms : Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 258\u2013280. The larger theoretical trend that Kruks draws our attention to is Simone de Beauvoir working in and across both phenomenology and a Marxist-inflected culturally oriented structuralist materialism. While Beauvoir is often read as phenomenology, she…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,152,183,162,3],"tags":[185,189,188,184,163,186,187,190],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-summary","category-feminist-studies-research-guide","category-marxist","category-material-feminisms","category-ph-d-digital-portfolio","tag-feminist","tag-kruks","tag-marxism","tag-marxist","tag-material-feminisms","tag-phenomenology","tag-reification","tag-simone-de-beauvoir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stacycacciatore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}