Appeals for Freedom: Lori Jo Marso's Politics with Beauvoir and Elaine Stavro's Emancipatory Thinking

Political theorists, philosophers, writers, and artists of various kinds have long preoccupied themselves with conceptualizing freedom, but few have looked to Simone de Beauvoir to assist, animate, or affect their searches. Even Beauvoir scholars have not sufficiently rummaged through Beauvoir's works to give a fuller account of her "emancipatory thinking." There is much more to mine from Beauvoir's trove on this important topic and it is wonderful to have two new books that take up this project in different ways. The great strength of Lori Jo Marso's Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter and Elaine Stavro's Emancipatory Thinking: Simone de Beauvoir and Contemporary Political Thought is that they engage Beauvoir on the topic of freedom, as their titles reveal. These books will appeal to broad audiences in political theory, feminist theory, philosophy as well as film studies (in Marso's case) and literary studies (especially in Stavro's case).

Marso and Stavro engage Beauvoir's best known works, especially The Second Sex, but also The Ethics of Ambiguity. This is both necessary and to be expected. What's particularly noteworthy is how the two authors bring attention to some of her lesser-known works such as "Right-Wing Thought Today," "An Eye for an Eye," "Must We Burn Sade?" and her multi-volume memoir to enhance their discussions of freedom.

Four additional points of commonality are worth mentioning before I turn to each work on its own. First, both emphasize Beauvoir as a keen critic of bourgeois politics, culture and society. Second, Beauvoir has been subject to numerous (albeit often contradictory) bad readings. Thus, the authors argue for a re-engagement with Beauvoir ("re-encounter" for Marso and "recuperation" for Stavro). Both make a critical point about Beauvoir's reception. For Marso, the problem is that many think they know Beauvoir, but don't; for Stavro, there have been too many "glib" interpretations that gloss over some of Beauvoir's greatest points. Third, both are convinced by the primacy Beauvoir accords the body. All subjectivity is necessarily embodied and materially conditioned, but not wholly determined by biology or immanent processes, however real these are too. Always questioning that nature is wholly determinate, let alone perfectly clear, Beauvoir writes "it is a long way from ovum to woman." Social customs are greatly responsible for how any body, fully subject to learned meaning and taboos, is lived. Fourth, both see in Beauvoirian freedom the possibility for transforming politics into something more "radically human" (for Stavro) and "coalitional" (for Marso).

Marso primarily formulates her engagement with Beauvoir as "encounter," as in "freedom in the." She maintains this is a supplement to Beauvoir's embrace of "ambiguity" and "situation," other key concepts that recur in Beauvoir's works. Her essential thesis is that Beauvoirian freedom occurs (or not) in the encounter. As I see it, her sub-title would be more true to her argument if it read: "Freedom (or not) in the Encounter" since she acknowledges how some encounters embrace, while others refuse, or ignore, freedom's demands. But this would be less elegant a turn of phrase. Not only this. It would also deflect attention away from the more positive and specific political weight she wants to give the concept. If freedom is to occur, then it will be by taking up encounters in ways that confer freedom for oneself and others. Appeals for freedom can certainly go awry; there are never any guarantees and the risks are ubiquitous. Frustration and failure are built-in, but the failures themselves are not reasons to refuse freedom's perpetual appeals. Moreover, our situations (bodily, psychological, material, socioeconomic and so on) constrain or enable us variously for assuming both...