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Julia Kristeva is a true polymath, an intellectual of astonishingly wide range whose erudition and insight have been brought to bear on psychoanalysis, liter... | CUP

Julia Kristeva’s latest book, Passions of Our Time, is due out next week. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier.

#julia kristeva #women in linguistics #constance borde #sheila malovany-chevallier #columbia university press #womenintranslation

Reading The Second Sex - Preface

I recently received a copy of the Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir. Since this is such an influential text in modern feminist thought, I've decided to give it a careful reading. A few days later, I'm several chapters in, and have a great many thoughts about the text, so I've decided to journal them here. This post is to provide personal context, so that my other posts can be focused on the chapter of the book in question.

The point of this is not really to make any major contributions to feminist thought. I don't have much background in academic feminism, so I don't have a fantastic sense of how exactly feminist thought has evolved in the 70+ years since this book was published. That said, I have been listening to feminist ideas for several years; I expect many of the thoughts I have on the text are retellings of previous writers whose ideas I have heard over the years. With that in mind, the idea is not that my reading of the text is especially groundbreaking.

Rather, this is a way for me to organize my thoughts as I read. I have a specific perspective on the text that is informed by my experience, and I think it will be helpful for myself to synthesize some ideas as I read. If this is of any interest to others, then all the better. With that in mind, I thought I would ground my commentary by referring to specific parts of the text. I am reading the unabridged version translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, published in 2011 (as best I can tell). I will cite page numbers as I have them, and the analysis we be categorized by chapter so it should hopefully be intelligible for other versions of the text. I am not fluent in French, so I will be limited to this English translation.

The translators have fortunately used the terminology of the time of the original text intact. Notably, this excludes concepts such as the delineation of sex and gender, and includes use of terms like "sexuality" that may seem discordant to a modern reader (who is more likely to hear that term in discussions of LGBTQ+ people). While I am immensely thankful the translators retained the original wording, I see no reason to hold myself to the same restriction. I plan to replace the terms in the text with modern terms that I think most accurately reflect my interpretation of the text. I'll use brackets to denote this, and the page reference will hopefully be sufficient for the interested reader to critically evaluate my substitutions.

As far as personal context, I have read far enough that it has become clear that I have a few identities that are important to how I read this text. The first, and least important, is that I am a practicing scientist. I am a physicist, so I don't expect my technical expertise to be too relevant here, but working in science colors how I interpret the sections on science, and makes me aware of my limits when speaking to topics where I am not an expert; perhaps in ways someone who has less claim to expertise may not, for better and for worse. I am also a white woman, born and raised in the United States. This colors my understanding of racism, imperialism, and the international effects of colonialism - they are often academic and impersonal issues, vitally important ethically and historically, but ultimately not immediately and directly oppressive to me.

I am also a transgender woman. I am not interested in debating whether this part of my identity makes me unable to speak from the perspective of a woman. I suffer under patriarchy because of my womanhood, experience misogyny, and my daily life has far, far more in common with a cis woman than a cis man. But there are some relevant differences between the trans and cis experiences of womanhood. There are some obvious differences of anatomy, in my case I benefited from male privilege for two decades before I came out, and I "opted into" womanhood in a way cis women typically don't. Of course, I didn't actually choose to be a woman any more than cis women; no one chooses their gender identity. But I did decide to transition, to present to others as a woman, despite patriarchy, despite misogyny, and despite transphobia. This is an often underappreciated part of the trans experience. Throughout my commentary, I will refer to the parts of it that I understand differently as a trans woman. I think this will be interesting in many ways; for me it will help understand the ways in which my intersectional identity affects my reading; for cis folks I'm sure it will reveal some interesting parts of the trans experience that are not obvious.

I think that is just about everything I wanted to preface my reading with, and now I can write while conscious of my starting point. ^^

#the second sex #simone de beauvoir #constance borde #sheila malovany-chevallier #feminism #transfeminism #book reading