Feminist Research Speaker Series
CANCELLED: Will be rescheduled to a later date.
Talk Title: Beauvoir and Black Feminism: the Gender Ideology of Bodily Force
Speaker: Dr. Beata Stawarska, University of Oregon
Beata Stawarska is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. She has published widely on contemporary European Philosophy (especially phenomenology and post-structuralism), feminist philosophy (especially Beauvoir, Butler, Kristeva, and Irigaray), African and Africana philosophy (especially Fanon and Senghor), philosophy of psychology, dialogical philosophy, and philosophy of language (broadly construed).
Abstract: My talk engages Beauvoir’s understudied reflections on “the lessons of violence” in The Second Sex in dialogue with recent scholarship by Kathryn Belle (Belle and Beauvoir (2024)), Patricia Hill Collins (Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (2004); Black Feminist Thought (2000 [1990])), and Oyeronke Oyewumi (The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997); Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds: Making an African Sense of Feminist Epistemologies (2000)). In agreement with the Black feminist critics, a Beauvoirian femininity based on white middle class womanhood informs dominant contemporary feminist discourses, including on anti-gendered violence. This femininity is believed to be intrinsically ‘victimized’ and ‘powerless’ (Oyewumi 1997). However, in The Second Sex (1949), Beauvoir also tracks the historical, social, cultural, and scientific processes that have rendered bodily force, including violence, a masculine prerogative and a feminine taboo. Read through the lens of critical phenomenology (Gunther 2021), Beauvoir critiques social institutions (the nuclear family and state education) and scientific discourses (biology) for co-constituting quasi-transcendental heteropatriarchal structures such as a sexual hierarchy of the “stronger” and “weaker sex.” This hierarchy perpetuates the idea that “women” are intrinsically vulnerable to violence, which Beauvoir contests. Ultimately, her critique of sexual hierarchies can be recovered today in the spirit of feminist solidarity building to support Collins’ diagnosis of the dominant gendered ideology (2004) and Oyewumi’s call for dismantling traditional womanhood (2000).
Abstract: My talk engages Beauvoir’s understudied reflections on “the lessons of violence” in The Second Sex in dialogue with recent scholarship by Kathryn Belle (Belle and Beauvoir (2024)), Patricia Hill Collins (Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (2004); Black Feminist Thought (2000 [1990])), and Oyeronke Oyewumi (The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997); Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds: Making an African Sense of Feminist Epistemologies (2000)). In agreement with the Black feminist critics, a Beauvoirian femininity based on white middle class womanhood informs dominant contemporary feminist discourses, including on anti-gendered violence. This femininity is believed to be intrinsically ‘victimized’ and ‘powerless’ (Oyewumi 1997). However, in The Second Sex (1949), Beauvoir also tracks the historical, social, cultural, and scientific processes that have rendered bodily force, including violence, a masculine prerogative and a feminine taboo. Read through the lens of critical phenomenology (Gunther 2021), Beauvoir critiques social institutions (the nuclear family and state education) and scientific discourses (biology) for co-constituting quasi-transcendental heteropatriarchal structures such as a sexual hierarchy of the “stronger” and “weaker sex.” This hierarchy perpetuates the idea that “women” are intrinsically vulnerable to violence, which Beauvoir contests. Ultimately, her critique of sexual hierarchies can be recovered today in the spirit of feminist solidarity building to support Collins’ diagnosis of the dominant gendered ideology (2004) and Oyewumi’s call for dismantling traditional womanhood (2000).