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Week 2, 30 April - Kate Kirkpatrick (Oxford): The Myth of Recognition in The Second Sex 

Since Eva Lundgren-Gothlin鈥檚 Sex and Existence and Nancy Bauer鈥檚 Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism, several philosophical interpreters of The Second Sex have shared the assumption that The Second Sex is Hegelian and that 鈥渢he Hegel question鈥�—namely, the debate about whether and to what extent Beauvoir鈥檚 account of woman as the Other is indebted to Hegel鈥檚 Master/Slave dialectic—is best answered by reading Beauvoir through 鈥淔rench Hegel鈥�, and especially through the reading of Alexandre Koj猫ve. This paper argues on historical, textual, and conceptual grounds that Beauvoir鈥檚 philosophical and political project in The Second Sex is better characterized as anti-Hegelian, sharing methodological and political commitments with the 鈥渢urn to the concrete鈥� and 鈥淔rench Marx鈥�. Moreover, reading Beauvoir as a "French" Hegelian theorist of recognition overlooks her suspicion—a longstanding suspicion in French philosophy—of what she calls the "myth" of recognition itself.