Who's Afraid of Simone de Beauvoir?

This book studies into often surprising and yet unexplored areas in De Beauvoir’s thinking. Feminism, literature, existentialism and psychoanalysis take pride of place, but the work also foregrounds the subordination of women, religion, love and sexuality. The study is written from a male perspective. Too often, Simone de Beauvoir's work was seen as relevant only to women's self-awareness. However, this book examines the social significance of The Second Sex in particular. The starting point is on textuality, in the sense that De Beauvoir's work is primarily regarded as a corpus of texts, corresponding to other texts. This makes it possible to zoom in on the special role that religion and love play in her work. The study focuses on Simone de Beauvoir's work, not that much viewed from the perspective of the cult surrounding her as a person, but as a corpus of texts. What is special about The Second Sex is that it itself provides the blueprint for what is elaborated in the present study: The Second Sex is a book that reads and interprets, like the misogynistic language that is woven into Western culture. This is evident, for example, in De Beauvoir's meticulous reading of literature, mysticism, the discourse on love and the countless references to psychoanalysis. It then becomes clear that Beauvoir's feminism is not a matter for women alone, but concerns society, which is unfree when one sex is systematically placed in second place. The reader of this study is challenged to read Simone de Beauvoir's work beyond the clichés and ultimately recognize the relevance of her thinking to our contemporary problems with gender.