"[Marso's] work on de Beauvoir demonstrates convincingly the inaccuracy of reading feminist theory as a species of thinking separated from politics." - Kathleen B. Jones (Los Angeles Review of Books) "A gripping and novel reading of Simone de Beauvoir’s politics of freedom and Beauvoirian feminism. . . . A welcome contribution to Beauvoir scholarship and feminist political theory." - Megan Burke (H-France, H-Net Reviews) "Marso brilliantly demonstrates the way in which encounter is at the very center of everything Beauvoir wrote . . . . An important new contribution that extends studies on Beauvoir." - Mary Walsh (Review of Politics) "This book has a wide appeal. . . . Informative and accessible." - Angela Shepherd (Feminist Theory) “<i>Politics with Beauvoir</i> is an essential text for any scholar who is interested in expanding their engagement with Beauvoir’s work. Just as the Beauvoirian encounters Marso stages in this text illuminate the fecundity of real engagement with alterity and difference, so, too, does the text itself show the possibilities for encounters in a world where Beauvoir truly becomes <i>ours</i>.” - Qrescent Mali Mason (Asian Journal of Social Science)
Introduction: Our Beauvoir 1
1. (Re)Encountering The Second Sex 17
Part I. Enemies: Monsters, Men, and Misogynist Art
2. "An Eye for an Eye" with Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem 41
3. The Marquis de Sade's Bodies in Lars von Trier's Antichrist 67
Part II. Allies: Antinomies of Action in Conditions of Violence
4. Violence, Pathologies, and Resistance in Frantz Fanon 97
5. In Solidarity with Richard Wright 122
Part III. Friends: Conversations that Change the Rules
6. Perverse Protests from Chantal Akerman to Lars von Trier 153
7. Unbecoming Women with Violette Leduc, Rahel Varnhagen, and Margarethe von Trotta 176
Conclusion: A Happy Ending 203
Notes 209
References 235
Index 247