A saraband of imagery

the uses of biological science in Le deuxième sexe

Elizabeth Fallaize

pp. 67-84

in: Lester Embree (ed), The existential phenomenology of Simone de Beauvoir, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

In this essay, I argue that the review of scientific material presented in the chapter of Le deuxième sexe entitled "The Data of Biology" can be read in the light of Beauvoir's previously completed work on myth. Her concern with the role of metaphor is also shown to prefigure Fox Keller's feminist critique of science.But it is doubtless impossible to approach any human problem with a mind free from bias. The way in which questions are put, the points of view assumed, presuppose a relativity of interest; all characteristics imply values, and every objective description, so called, implies an ethical background.¹The women of today are in a fair way to dethrone the myth of femininity. (II 9/-)²