The body as a basis for being

Simone de Beauvoir and Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Suzanne Laba Cataldi

pp. 85-106

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

Abstract

Beauvoir's understanding of the process of "becoming a woman' is related to the ambiguities, abilities, and disabilities of embodiment. Merleau-Pony "s notion of an ambivilant consciousness is applied to the question of woman's complicity in her own oppression. Beauvoir "s fictional accounts of women lacking in sexual desire are connected to her views of female eroticism in Le deuxième sexe and to Merleau-Ponty's notion of intimate perception.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice

de Beauvoir Simone