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theories and methodologies

What Can Literature Do? as a THE PAST TWENTY YEARS HAVE SEEN A BEAUVOIR REVIVAL IN FEMI- NIST THEORY. FEMINIST PHILOSOPHERS, POLITICAL SCIENTISTS, AND Literary Theorist historians of ideas have all made powerful contributions to our un- derstanding of her philosophy, above all !e Second Sex.! Literary studies have lagged somewhat behind." Given that Beauvoir always )*+,- .*, de#ned herself as a writer rather than as a philosopher (Moi, Simone de Beauvoir 52–57), this is an unexpected state of affairs. Ursula Tidd’s explanation is that Beauvoir’s is theoretically incompatible with the poststructuralist trends that have dominated feminist criticism:

Viewed as unsympathetic to “écriture féminine” and to feminist differentialist critiques of language, Beauvoir’s broadly realist and “committed” approach to literature has been deemed less technically challenging than experimental women’s writing exploring the femi- nine, read through the lens of feminist psychoanalytic theory. (“État Présent” 205)

In my view, Beauvoir’s is far more interesting than the poststructuralist tradition has given her credit for.$ I want to contribute to the celebration of her centenary by returning to her un- derstanding of the powers of writing. I shall do so by drawing atten- tion to her contribution to a debate entitled “Que peut la littérature?”

(“What can literature do?” or “What is the power of literature?”)%. As TORIL MOI is James B. Duke Professor of far as I know, Beauvoir’s lecture has been neither translated into En- Literature and Romance Studies, profes- glish nor anthologized in French a&er its #rst publication. sor of theater studies, and professor of Another reason why this text has remained neglected is its un- English at Duke University. Her most re- pretentiousness. Beauvoir’s voice is clear and simple, her examples cent book is and the Birth of ordinary. Unless readers bring to the text signi#cant knowledge of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy (Ox- ford UP, 2006), winner of the MLA’s Aldo philosophy and literary theory, they may never realize that Beauvoir and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Com- here writes as a “formidably hidden” literary theorist, to paraphrase parative Literary Studies. Her Simone de Michèle Le Doeu'.( Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual I shall place Beauvoir’s essay in its historical context and bring Woman (1994) was republished with a out the major theoretical implications of her arguments. Because new introduction in 2008 (Oxford UP).

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the essay is so little read, I will provide ample Founded as a literary review in spring 1960 quotations to convey the flavor of the text. by Philippe Sollers, Tel quel first hitched its Aere is much more to say about Beauvoir’s fortunes to the new novel. By the end of 1964, essay, but further explorations will have to however, that alliance was becoming strained, wait for a di'erent time and place.B and in 1965 Tel quel broke with the new novel and set out on its own semiotic and semiologi- methodologies cal adventures, in a shi& that the sociologist A Meeting Marking a Generational Shift

and Niilo Kauppi summarizes as the “transition Que peut la littérature? was the question from Sartre’s hegemony to that of the human posed at a meeting organized in the great hall sciences” (Making xv).D By the late 1960s, Ro- of the Mutualité Aeater in Paris on 9 Decem- land Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques

theories ber 1964 by the communist student maga- Lacan were all associated with Tel quel. Both zine Clarté (Francis and Gonthier 77). Billed directly, through , who joined as a confrontation between the “new novel” the editorial board in 1970, and indirectly, Tel (nouveau roman) and “committed literature” quel was a signi#cant power behind the kind (littérature engagée), the meeting was the of French that de#ned itself brainchild of Yves Buin (1938– ), the editor against Beauvoir’s existentialism.E of Clarté, who hoped to raise money for his Because it catches the protagonists just #nancially ailing magazine (Beauvoir, Tout before the scales weighing French symbolic compte 170–71). Buin invited six writers, three capital tipped in favor of the new generation, on each side of the question. In the “formal- the meeting is of considerable historical in- ist” corner, he placed two defenders of the new terest. In December 1964 it was by no means novel, Jean Ricardou (1932– ) and Jean-Pierre clear that Ricardou and Faye represented the Faye (1925– ), and a representative of “uncom- future of French intellectual life. On the con- mitted literature,” the young but inCuential trary: Beauvoir and Sartre probably never writer and editor Yves Berger (1931– ); in the enjoyed greater fame and recognition than at “committed” corner, two existentialists, Jean- that moment. In the spring Sartre published Paul Sartre (1905–80) and Beauvoir (1908– Les mots (The Words). In October he was 86), and the well-known communist militant awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, which and writer Jorge Semprun (1923– ). he refused. In fact, the meeting took place the Originally, Claude Simon, a heavyweight same week that the Nobel Prizes were awarded of the new novel, was also to have partici- in Stockholm. As for Beauvoir, she published pated, but squabbles behind the scenes made the third volume of her autobiography, La him pull out and urge his fellow new novel- force des choses (!e Force of Circumstance), in ists to pull out as well (Beauvoir, Tout compte 1963. In October 1964 she followed this with 171). As a result, the new novel was defended a brief narrative called Une mort très douce by the still relatively obscure Ricardou and (A Very Easy Death), the story of her mother’s Faye. Faye had just won the Renaudot Prize death, which many consider her #nest text. for a novel called L’écluse (“Ae Lock” or “Ae Sartre’s and Beauvoir’s fame made the Sluice”), and Ricardou, already the author of meeting an enormous success: six thousand one novel, L’observatoire de Cannes (“The people and a German television crew turned Cannes Observatory”), was rapidly making a up to learn what literature could do (Beau- name for himself as a major theorist of the voir, Tout compte 171). Rereading the contri- new novel. As it happened, Ricardou and Faye butions today, I #nd Beauvoir’s to be the most were also both members of the editorial board far-ranging. Sartre mostly limited himself to of a journal called Tel quel. a critique of the idea that the task of literature /01./ ] Toril Moi FGF theories is to reCect on literature. Aat theory casts the ally ensured that the ascendant poststructur- literary work as an “absolute reality” (réalité alists would dismiss her as a dinosaur, given absolue) and turns the reader into an alienated that their starting point was the radically

creature, whose only task is to realize the pre- di'erent idea that language is a structure or and existing order of the text (Contribution 112– a system. To develop a new, less dismissive

13). Literature is not an absolute, self-enclosed account of her views, we need to realize that methodologies reality, Sartre writes, but rather an appeal to Beauvoir’s understanding of language places the freedom of the reader, an invitation to her in the neighborhood inhabited by ordi- collaborate in the creation of the work: the nary language philosophers such as Ludwig author writes the score (partition); the reader Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and Cavell, who provides the concert performance (120). all think of language as constituted by speech There are many reasons to return to acts, or—if one prefers—by language use. Beauvoir’s contribution to Que peut la litté- (Aere is no evidence that Beauvoir ever read rature? I shall show that she outlines a phe- anything by these thinkers.) nomenological understanding of literature Ae second striking feature in Beauvoir’s based on the idea that speaking and writ- de#nition of literature is her reference to the ing are acts in the world, a theory that has dévoilement, or “unveiling,” of the world. On interesting affinities with the aesthetics of this point, the inCuence of Heidegger’s aes- Martin Heideg ger and of ordinary language thetics is obvious, and not surprising, since philosophy. I shall also show that Beauvoir’s Beauvoir and Sartre o&en acknowledged that literary theory focuses on speech acts, voice, German phenomenology was a crucial source and identification (three features bound to of inspiration for existentialism.!J Writing alienate the rising generation of poststruc- about van Gogh’s painting of a pair of peasant turalists). Today we may be able to appreciate shoes, Heidegger notes, “Van Gogh’s painting the strengths of her antiformalist defense of is the disclosure of what the equipment, the voice in literature, for example by relating it pair of peasant shoes, is in truth. Ais entity to the work of , for whom voice emerges into the unconcealedness of its be- is also a de#ning feature of human existence.I ing. Ae Greeks called the unconcealedness of Finally, I shall brieCy show that Beauvoir’s lit- beings aletheia” (35). While Heidegger thinks erary theory places her within a broad tradi- that the work of art unveils the essence and tion of European modernism and that anyone truth of being, Beauvoir’s view is less meta- interested in including women and members physical, more pragmatic: writing unveils of minorities in the literary canon still has truths in the world. Both, however, belong much to learn from her. squarely in the phenomenological tradition, in which to produce art is to see (reveal, un- veil) the world; to Beauvoir this means reveal- Literature as a Way of Seeing the World ing it from a highly speci#c, situated point of Beauvoir begins by de#ning literature as “une view and conveying that vision to others. activité qui est exercée par des hommes, pour If literature unveils the truth, why aren’t des hommes, en vue de leur dévoiler le monde, all kinds of documentary and scholarly writ- ce dévoilement étant une action” (“an activity ing (“information”) also literature? Speaking carried out by human beings, for human be- just before Beauvoir, Ricardou had claimed ings, with the aim of unveiling the world for that information was dismissible. People who them, and this unveiling is an action”; 73). provide information, he declared, consider First, Beauvoir considers language a form language a means to an end, an end that is of action. By beginning in this way, she virtu- always outside language; they write to bear FGK What Can Literature Do? Simone de Beauvoir as a Literary Theorist [ PMLA

witness to a state of a'airs or to teach some- de ce qui fait notre individualité” (“the situ- thing (51). Genuine writers, on the other ation implies our past, our social class, our hand, consider language as a sensuous mate- state, our projects, in short everything that rial; to them the point of writing is language makes up our individuality”; 76). In !e Sec- itself. With a vague reference to Barthes, ond Sex she writes that the body is also a situ- Ricardou calls this a distinction between ation.!! In spite of our singularity, we are not methodologies écrivants and écrivains, or “scribblers” and isolated monads. While we are existentially

and “writers” (51–52). (By the time Barthes pub- separated from one another, we can commu- lished S/Z, in 1970, this had become a distinc- nicate, because our projects relate to the same tion between two types of text, le scriptible world and because each project always opens and le lisible, o&en translated as “the writerly” onto the projects of others (76–78).

theories and “the readerly” [557–58].) When Beauvoir speaks of representing re- Accusing Ricardou of dismissing “infor- ality, she does not mean that it is possible to mation” rather too quickly, Beauvoir points grasp reality as if it were a thing: “La réalité out that there can be excellent uses of, say, tele- n’est pas un être #gé; c’est un devenir, c’est, je le vision and radio that could provide crucial in- ré pète, un tournoiement des expériences sin- formation to many people (74–75). Also, works gu lières qui s’enveloppent les unes les autres of sociology, psychology, history, and other tout en restant séparées” (“Reality is not a #xed kinds of documentation are necessary for any- entity; it is a becoming; it is, I repeat, a spin- one wishing to understand the world. But if ning of singular experiences that intertwine such works illuminate the world, what is then and overlap while still remaining separate”; the di'erence between them and literature? 80). A writer therefore always represents his or Working her way toward a de#nition of her singular situation in relation to the world. literature, Beauvoir begins by saying that the Given all this, the di'erence between lit- world is “une totalité détotalisée” (“a detotal- erature and other kinds of writing is not what ized totality”; 76). On the one hand, the world one might expect: Beauvoir does not claim is the sort of thing that exists for us all and that scholarly and documentary writing tries that we can have accurate knowledge about (it to grasp the world in its thinglike totality, is a totality). On the other hand, however, we whereas literature grasps it as a nontotalizable will never be able actually to grasp the world process. Instead, she turns to the pioneer- as a totality because each one of us is in a ing American anthropologist Oscar Lewis’s unique situation: we grasp the world through !e Children of Sánchez: Autobiography of a our projects, and our projects at once sur- Mexican Family, published in France in 1963, round (enveloppe; 81) and express the world a book that reproduces the voices of the mem- as we experience it. Ae phrase “detotalized bers of a poor family in Mexico City to show totality” emphasizes what the world is to us. “what it means to grow up in a one-room home (If she had said “untotalizable totality,” which in a slum tenement in the heart of a great Latin she might well have done, the emphasis would American city which is undergoing a process have been on what we cannot do.) For Beau- of rapid social and economic change” (Lewis voir, then, we experience the world as a con- xi). Considering the techniques of this book to stant becoming, an ongoing process that can be highly novelistic (75), Beauvoir neverthe- never be grasped as an objective whole: it will less feels that Lewis’s compelling account of always remain “detotalized” to us (75–76). poor children in Mexico is not literature: “je Each situation is singular: “cette situation les annexe à mon univers, mais je ne change impliqu[e] notre passé, notre classe, notre pas d’univers” (“I annex them to my universe, condition, nos projets, en#n tout l’ensemble but I don’t change universes”; 82). /01./ ] Toril Moi FGL theories To discover what Beauvoir means by insist- reveals that her understanding of literature ing that only literature makes a reader “change is based on a profound preoccupation with universes,” we need to bear in mind that Beau- skepticism. Sense perceptions have always

voir considers separation and solitude to be the been a key issue for skepticism with respect and fundamental existential situation: to other minds. How do I know that you see

green when I see green? Or that this tomato methodologies Et c’est ça le miracle de la littérature et qui la soup tastes the same to you as to me? Such distingue de l’information: c’est qu’une vérité questions convey precisely the experience of autre devient mienne sans cesser d’être au- separation: our sense that there are things we tre. J’abdique mon « je » en faveur de celui qui simply cannot communicate to one another. parle; et pourtant je reste moi-même. Ae point of literature, then, is to over- C’est une confusion sans cesse ébauchée, come separation. This happens through sans cesse défaite et c’est la seule forme de communication qui soit capable de me don- identi#cation. Perfectly cognizant of recent ner l’incommunicable, qui soit capable de me critiques of the concept, Beauvoir develops a donner le goût d’une autre vie. (82–83) remarkably original notion of identi#cation:

Aat is the miracle of literature, which dis- De toute façon, moi, lecteur, ce qui m’importe tinguishes it from information: that an other c’est d’être fasciné par un monde singulier truth becomes mine without ceasing to be qui se recoupe avec le mien et pourtant qui other. I renounce my own “I” in favor of the est autre. speaker; and yet I remain myself. Ceci pose la question de l’identification. It is an intermingling ceaselessly begun Il y a une tendance, dans la littérature and ceaselessly undone, and it is the only d’aujourd’hui, à refuser l’identi#cation avec kind of communication capable of giving me le personnage et plus radicalement, à refuser that which cannot be communicated, capable le personnage même. of giving me the taste of another life. Mais je trouve aussi que cette discussion [est] oiseuse parce que, de toute façon, qu’il Literature overcomes existential separation y ait personnage ou non, pour que la lec- and connects us to others. It does so by mak- ture prenne, il faut que je m’identifie avec ing me “taste” another life. quelqu’un: avec l’auteur; il faut que j’entre dans son monde et que ce soit son monde qui devient le mien. (81–82) Identification: The Taste of Another Life In any case, for me as a reader what matters is What does Beauvoir mean by “taste”? “Je to be fascinated by a singular world that over- mourrai d’une mort qui est absolument laps with mine and yet is other. unique pour moi, mais c’est la même chose Ais raises the question of identi#cation. pour chacun de vous. Il y a un goût unique Aere is a tendency in literature today to re- de la vie de chacun, qu’en un sens personne ject identification with the character, and, d’autre ne peut connaître. Mais c’est la même more radically, to reject even the character. But I also find that this discussion [is] chose pour chacun de nous” (“I will die a futile since, in any case, whether there is a death that is absolutely unique to me, but character or not, for reading to “take” I have it’s the same for each one of you. Aere is a to identify with someone: with the author; I unique taste to each life, which, in a way, no- have to enter into his world, and his world body else can know. But it’s the same for each must become mine. one of us”; 78–79). By relating the theme of ex- istential separation to epistemology (to what To identify with the author, then, is not to we can’t know about one another), Beauvoir imagine or feel that one is the author or that FGN What Can Literature Do? Simone de Beauvoir as a Literary Theorist [ PMLA

one shares his or her characteristics. It is, for a tent: to #nd a way of telling a story, Beauvoir moment, to occupy the same position (the same notes, is at once to #nd a rhythm and a subject spatial coordinates, as it were) in relation to the matter (84–85). In other words, the very way I world. To see the world as another human be- tell a story is my story. I take this to mean not ing sees it while at the same time remaining only that Beauvoir wishes to avoid formalism oneself: this is the “miracle” of literature. but also that she wishes to avoid simplistic methodologies Beauvoir’s understanding of identifica- theories of an inner message wrapped in an

and tion does not necessarily involve psychologi- external form. For Beauvoir, it is only in the cal identification with a specific character, hard struggle to #nd a way to say it that au- nor does it lead to a preference for psychologi- thors realize what they have to say. cally realistic, “rounded” characters in #ction.

theories KaMa, Balzac, and Robbe-Grillet are equally Modernism and interesting, she writes; all three persuade her to live, if only for a moment, “au cœur d’un autre Literature has a fundamental relation to the monde” (“at the heart of another world”; 82). experience of existential separation and soli- Literature arises when “un écrivain est tude: “Si la littérature cherche à dépasser la capable de manifester et d’imposer une vé- séparation au point où elle semble le plus in- rité; celle de son rapport au monde, celle de dépassable, elle doit parler de l’angoisse, de la son monde” (“a writer is capable of making solitude, de la mort, parce que ce sont juste- visible and imposing a truth: the truth of his ment des situations qui nous enferment le relation to the world, the truth of his world”; plus radicalement dans notre singularité” (“If 83). Realism, therefore, is not a salient issue literature seeks to overcome separation at the for Beauvoir. Since all a writer can do is to point where this seems the most impossible show us the world she or he sees, we are al- thing to do, it has to speak of anguish, soli- ways in the writer’s universe, regardless of tude, and death, since those are precisely the genre and style. When Beauvoir reads Le père situations that imprison us the most radically Goriot, she knows perfectly well that she is in our singularity”; 91). Beauvoir here gives walking around not in Paris as it was in the voice to a quintessentially modernist experi- nineteenth century but “dans l’univers de ence of the world. In this lecture, she appears Balzac” (“in Balzac’s universe”; 81). to di'er from more pessimistic modernists in For Beauvoir, the “miracle of literature” her conviction that as long as we manage to can only happen when the reader feels in speak, as long as we manage to put something the presence of a human voice: “Il n’y a pas into words, then surely someone will under- de littérature s’il n’y a pas une voix, donc un stand us: “Le langage nous réintègre à la com- langage qui porte la marque de quelqu’un” munauté humaine; un malheur qui trouve (“There is no literature if there is no voice, des mots pour se dire n’est plus une radicale that is to say language that bears the mark of exclusion, il devient moins intolérable” (“Lan- somebody”; 79). Ae emphasis on voice, in- guage reintegrates us into the human com- cidentally, is a logical conclusion for a theo- munity; unhappiness that #nds the words to rist who begins by considering literature as express itself is no longer a radical exclusion: a speech act. It follows that literature is not it becomes less intolerable”; 91–92). synonymous with #ction. Novels, autobiogra- Unlike a philosopher like Cavell, then, phies, and essays can all be literature, as long Beauvoir does not appear to worry about as they have the necessary voice (84). situations in which I might utter words that Voice also supersedes the “outmoded” completely fail to reach others, words that (périmée) distinction between form and con- convince others that I am incomprehensible, /01./ ] Toril Moi FGO theories a mad babbler. Austin also doubts that we and then contrast it with an accurate transla- can “secure uptake” (139)—that is, ensure tion of Beauvoir’s original. Parshley writes: that our words will be taken by others in the

It is not without some regret that she shuts way we want them to be taken. (To determine and whether Beauvoir underestimated the risk of behind her the doors of her new home; when

remaining unheard, it would be necessary to she was a girl, the whole countryside was her methodologies reexamine all her writings on literature, and homeland; the forests were hers. Now she is her novels as well.) Her fundamental vision confined to a restricted space: Nature is re- duced to the dimensions of a potted geranium; nevertheless remains unaltered: literature is walls cut o' the horizon. But she is going to set necessary because it makes us feel less alone about overcoming these limitations. (450) in facing the #nitude of existence. Finally, Beauvoir’s understanding of liter- Ais is what Beauvoir actually wrote: ature and why we read it is exceptionally pro- ductive for feminists and others who believe It is not without some regret that she shuts that literature—and the canon too—must in- behind her the doors of her new home; when clude voices of women, members of minori- she was a girl, the whole earth [terre] was her ties, and other excluded groups. In !e Second homeland; the forests were hers. Now she is Sex, particularly in part 2, subtitled “Lived confined to a restricted space; nature is re- Experience,” Beauvoir draws on an unusually duced to the dimensions of a potted geranium; high number of novels, autobiographies, and walls cut off the horizon. One of Virginia letters by women. No writer is quoted more Woolf’s heroines [in !e Waves] murmurs:!% than Colette, but Virginia Woolf’s voice is Whether it is summer, whether it is winter, also strongly present.!" Ae literary material I no longer know by the moor grass, and adds energy, vitality, and validity to !e Sec- the heath Cower; only by the steam on the ond Sex, and knowledge too. window-pane, or the frost on the window- It would take a separate paper fully to an- pane.!( [. . .] I, who used to walk through alyze Beauvoir’s use of literature in !e Second beech woods noting the jay’s feather turn- Sex. To catch a glimpse of what the text loses ing blue as it falls, past the shepherd and when the literary voices disappear, however, the tramp [. . .], go from room to room it is sufficient to compare H. M. Parshley’s with a duster.!B translation of !e Second Sex with the French But she will work to deny [s’appliquer à orginal. As is now well known, Parshley cut nier] this limitation.!D about fifteen percent of Beauvoir’s original text. To achieve this, he consistently elimi- Beauvoir’s voice falls silent to leave room for nated quotations from other writers, men as Woolf’s; Woolf’s language introduces a touch well as women. (Women’s texts and women’s of poetry, as well as #nely wrought observa- names were, however, more severely cut.) Eliz- tions of nature and of the con#nement of the abeth Fallaize has shown that the chapter “Ae interior space. Married Woman” was particularly hard hit by Without the quotation, the text reads like Parshley’s scissors, to the point that reading it a general claim, made on Beauvoir’s author- in En glish and in French results in completely ity alone. As such it is clearly Cawed: nobody di'erent experiences (“Le destin”).!$ would agree that all women experience the be- Here is just one example, selected mostly ginning of married life in this way. But this is because it is brief, not because it is the most not Beauvoir’s point. When the quotation is in signi#cant or striking. For the sake of brevity, place, it becomes clear that she treats the pas- I shall quote the text in Parshley’s translation sage as exemplary, in the sense that she takes it FGQ What Can Literature Do? Simone de Beauvoir as a Literary Theorist [ PMLA

to express a genuine experience of the world.!E source of knowledge of women’s situation in Ae multitude of literary voices in !e Second a sexist world. By writing, women convey the Sex are there to show both that di'erent situa- unique taste of their own lives. By reading their tions give rise to di'erent experiences and that work, Beauvoir can, for a moment, see the world di'erent women may react di'erently to the as they see it without losing her own identity. same situation. Beauvoir is not setting forth In this way, other women’s texts become crucial methodologies general truths but rather attempting to convey sources of insight for the philosopher writing

and another woman’s way of seeing the world and !e Second Sex and valuable aesthetic experi- analyze the implications of that way of seeing. ences in their own right. It is diPcult to imag- In this respect, Beauvoir’s method in !e Sec- ine a better defense of why women’s voices must ond Sex is more closely related to literary criti- be included in the literary canon.

theories cism and psychoanalytic case studies than to sociology and other social sciences. The range and variety of Beauvoir’s ex- amples are stunning. In French, this passage is OTES followed by ten pages full of quotations from N other writers: not just Woolf but also Gaston 1. Inaugurating the new wave of Beauvoir studies Bachelard, Madeleine Bourdhouxe, Francis around 1990 were Fallaize, Novels; Kruks; Le Doeuff; Lundgren- Gothlin; and Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, the Ponge, James Agee, Colette Audry, Colette, second edition of which includes references to recent Marcel Jouheandeau, Jacques Chardonne, An- books on Beauvoir (1–2). dré Gide, and Violette Leduc are invoked and 2. Fallaize’s pioneering study of Beauvoir’s novels has o&en quoted at substantial length. In En glish, not been followed by a steady stream of literary studies. these ten pages have been reduced by two- An excellent overview of recent literary studies of Beau- voir can be found in Tidd, “État Présent” 205–06. See also thirds. All the quotations are gone, except for Tidd, Simone de Beauvoir. a few brief references to Bachelard. Beauvoir’s 3. For a di'erent attempt to show the interest of Beau- pleasure in others’ texts, her belief that we voir and Sartre’s theory of language and writing, see Moi, need to pay attention to the vision of the world “Meaning.” conveyed in literature, has become invisible. 4. Unattributed translations are mine. In the translation, her text reads like a 5. With reference to !e Second Sex, Le Doeu' writes that Beauvoir does philosophy in ways that make it hard series of dry, general, and o&en unconvinc- to discover what an original philosopher she is (139). ing claims: the maniacal housewife “becomes 6. It would be interesting, for example, to discuss the bitter and disagreeable and hostile to all that contributions and the intellectual trajectories of the other lives: the end is sometimes murder,” Parsh- participants in the debate, connect Beauvoir’s 1964 essay to her other writings on literature, consider the relation ley writes, thus making it look as if Beauvoir between Beauvoir’s and Sartre’s writings on literature, thinks house-proud women are likely to kill explore the aPnities between Beauvoir’s understanding to prevent people from dirtying their Coors of language and literature and ordinary language philoso- (452). In reality, “the end is sometimes mur- phy, and provide a theoretical analysis of the points of dis- der” is not a sentence written by Beauvoir but agreement between Beauvoir and the poststructuralists. 7. For more information on Tel quel’s role in French Parshley’s attempt to summarize Beauvoir’s intellectual life, see Kauppi, French Intellectual Nobility, explicit reference to the famous case of the and Marx- Scouras. Papin sisters (2: 269), two maids who killed 8. See Rodgers for a revealing series of interviews with the women who employed them. In 1947 Jean well-known French feminists from the 1970s and 1980s. Genet made them the subjects of his #rst play, 9. See Cavell’s discussion of the di'erences between himself and Derrida in “ Counter- philosophy and the Les bonnes (!e Maids). Pawn of Voice.” Beauvoir’s 1964 lecture on literature ex- 10. See, for example, Beauvoir’s account of their intel- plains why she always considered literature a lectual interests in the early 1930s in La force de l’âge. /01./ ] Toril Moi FGR theories 11. For a full discussion of the body as a situation, see Borde, Constance, and Sheila Malovany-Chevalier. “A Moi, Sex, particularly 59–82. Second Sex.” Interview by Sarah Glazer. Bookforum 12. I owe this information to my graduate student Kath- .com. Book forum, Apr.-May 2007. Web. 21 July 2008. leen Antonioli, who is writing a dissertation on Colette. Buin, Yves, ed. Que peut la littérature? Paris: 10/18–

13. I also draw attention to this disappearance of Union Générale d’Éditions, 1965. Print. L’inédit. and women’s voices in my own essay on the translation Cavell, Stanley. “ Counter-philosophy and the Pawn of

(“While We Wait” 40–44). In collaboration with Jona- Voice.” A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exer- methodologies than Cape, in the United Kingdom, Random House cises. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994. 53–127. Print. (Knopf) has commissioned Constance Borde and Sheila Fallaize, Elizabeth. “Le destin de la femme au foyer: Malovany-Chevalier to do a new translation of Beauvoir’s Traduire ‘La femme mariée’ de Simone de Beauvoir.” text. Publication is expected in 2009, to mark the book’s Cinquantenaire du Deuxième sexe. Ed. Christine Del- sixtieth anniversary. See the interview with the new phy and Sylvie Chaperon, with Kate Fullbrook and Ed- translators in Bookforum. Simons’s pioneering article on ward Fullbrook. Paris: Syllepse, 2002. 468–74. Print. the Parshley translation also remains relevant. ———. !e Novels of Simone de Beauvoir. London: Rout- 14. Beauvoir signals that she is quoting from The ledge, 1988. Print. Waves by placing a footnote here. Faye, Jean-Pierre. L’écluse. Paris: Seuil, 1964. Print. 15. Here Beauvoir skips, without signaling that she Francis, Claude, and Fernande Gonthier. Les écrits de Si- does so, the following sentence: “When the lark peels mone de Beauvoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1979. Print. high his ring of sound and it falls through the air like an Genet, Jean. Les bonnes. 1947. Paris: Folio-Gallimard, apple pairing, I stoop; I feed my baby.” 2001. Print. Trans. as The Maids. The Maids and 16. Woolf 172. Beauvoir does signal the omission in Death watch: Two Plays. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. the last sentence. She le& out a subclause: “who stared at New York: Grove, 1994. the woman squatted beside a tilted cart in a ditch.” Heidegger, Martin. “Ae Origin of the Work of Art.” Po- 17. For the French original, see Le deuxième sexe 2: etry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. 261–62. New York: Perennial-Harper, 1971. 15–86. Print. 18. For the di'erence between taking experience to Kauppi, Niilo. French Intellectual Nobility: Institutional be exemplary and taking it to be representative, see my and Symbolic Transformations in the Post- Sartrian discussion in Sex, 227–33. Era. Albany: State U of New York P, 1996. Print. SUNY Ser. in the Sociology of Culture. ———. !e Making of an Avant- Garde: Tel quel. Berlin: Mouton, 1994. Print. Approaches to Semiotics. WORKS CITED Kruks, Sonia. Situation and Human Existence: Freedom, Subjectivity and Society. London: Unwin, 1990. Print. Austin, J. L. How to Do !ings with Words. 1962. 2nd ed. Le Doeu', Michèle. Hipparchia’s Choice: An Essay concern- Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975. Print. ing Women, Philosophy, Etc. Trans. Trista Selous. Ox- Barthes, Roland. S/Z. 1970. Œuvres complètes. Ed. Éric ford: Blackwell, 1991. Print. Trans. of L’étude et le rouet: Marty. Vol. 2 (1966–73). Paris: Seuil, 1994. 555–739. Des femmes, de la philosophie, etc. Paris: Seuil, 1989. Print. Lewis, Oscar. !e Children of Sánchez: Autobiography of Beauvoir, Simone de. Contribution to Que peut la littéra- a Mexican Family. New York: Random, 1961. Print. ture? Buin 73–92. Trans. as Les enfants de Sánchez: Autobiographie ———. Le deuxième sexe. 1949. 2 vols. Paris: Folio- d’une famille mexicaine. Trans. Céline Zins. Paris: Gallimard, 1986. Print. Gallimard, 1963. ———. La force de l’âge. 2 vols. Paris: Folio-Gallimard, Lundgren- Gothlin, Eva. Kön och existens: Studier i Si- 1960. Print. Trans. as !e Prime of Life. Trans. Peter mone de Beauvoirs Le Deuxième Sexe. Gothenburg: Green. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988. Daidalos, 1991. Print. Trans. as Sex and Existence. ———. La force des choses. 2 vols. Paris: Folio-Gallimard, Trans. Linda Schenck. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 1996. 1963. Print. Trans. as !e Force of Circumstance. Trans. Marx- Scouras, Danielle. !e Cultural Politics of Tel quel: Richard Howard. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987. Literature and the Left in the Wake of Engagement. ———. Une mort très douce. Paris: Folio-Gallimard, 1964. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1996. Print. Print. Trans. as A Very Easy Death. Trans. Patrick Penn State Studies in Romance Lits. O’Brian. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983. Moi, Toril. “Meaning What We Say: Ae ‘Politics of Ae- ———. !e Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. 1952. Har- ory’ and the Responsibility of Intellectuals.” !e Phil- mondsworth: Penguin, 1984. Print. osophical Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir. Ed. Emily R. ———. Tout compte fait. Paris: Folio-Gallimard, 1970. Grosholz. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004. 139–60. Print. Print. Trans. as All Said and Done. Trans. Patrick ———. Sex, Gender and the Body: !e Student Edition of O’Brian. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987. What Is a Woman? Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print. FGS What Can Literature Do? Simone de Beauvoir as a Literary Theorist [ PMLA

———. Simone de Beauvoir: !e Making of an Intellectual Sartre, Jean-Paul. Contribution to Que peut la littérature? Woman. 1994. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Buin 107–27. Print. ———. Les mots. Paris: Gallimard, 1963. Print. Trans. as ———. “While We Wait: Notes on the English Translation The Words. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: of !e Second Sex.” !e Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir. Braziller, 1964. Ed. Emily R. Grosholz. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004. 37– Simons, Margaret. “Ae Silencing of Simone de Beauvoir: 68. Print. Rpt. of “While We Wait: Ae English Trans- Guess What’s Missing from !e Second Sex.” Women’s methodologies

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