 Contingent
Loves : Simone De Beauvoir and Sexuality by
Melanie Hawthorne (Editor)
As the existentialist philosophers of
mid-twentieth-century Paris famously asserted, a life can only be
assessed fully after it has ended. Fitting, then, that since her
death in 1986, the philosopher and novelist Simone de Beauvoir has
been the subject of numerous attempts to evaluate her
contributions to intellectual thought. With the uncovering of her
early diaries and the recent publication of her passionate letters
to Nelson Algren, she has become more than a towering figure of
twentieth-century feminism. She is at once an intensely human
figure and a fertile field for application of various sexual
constructs and for argument over feminist principles.
Edited by Melanie C. Hawthorne, this volume
brings into play a variety of fresh voices, from a Swedish
novelist and advice columnist to an interdisciplinary theorist of
decadence. The essays address the multitude of issues arising from
the affective, personal, political, and sexual dimensions of
Beauvoir's life and work. Fifty years after the publication of The
Second Sex, Contingent Loves offers a wide-ranging
discussion of the immeasurable impact Simone de Beauvoir has had
on feminist discourse.
Contents:
 | "Translation Effects: How Beauvoir Talks
Sex in English," Luise Von Flotow, University of Ottawa
| "Variations on Triangular
Relationships," Serge Julienne-Caffié, Philadelphia, Pa.
| "Leçon de Philo/Lesson in Love: Simone
de Beauvoir's Intellectual Passion and the Mobilization of
Desire," Melanie C. Hawthorne, Texas A&M University
| "Sensuality and Brutality:
Contradictions in Simone de Beauvoir's Writings about
Sexuality," Åsa Moberg, Sweden
| "Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren:
Self-Creation, Self-Contradiction, and the Exotic, Erotic
Feminist Other", Barbara Klaw, Northern Kentucky
University
| "Simone de Beauvoir on Henry de
Montherlant: A Map of Misreading?" Richard J. Golsan,
Texas A&M University
| "'Le Prototype de la Fade Répétition':
Beauvoir and Butler on the Work of Abjection in Repetitions
and Reconfigurations of Gender," Liz Constable,
University of California, Davis |
| | | | | |
"Contingent Loves coherently brings
recent queer theory, as developed primarily by Judith Butler, to
bear not only on Beauvoir's canonical writings but also on the
letters and diaries published after her death. As Hawthorne states
in her introduction, the time has come for a new stock-taking, for
the construction of a more sophisticated, less idealized view of
one of the century's most important writers."
Martha Noel Evans, Modern Language
Association
About the Author
Melanie C. Hawthorne, associate professor of
French at Texas A&M University, is the translator of
Rachilde's The Juggler and co-editor, with Richard J.
Golsan, of Gender and Fascism in Modern France.
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