Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir, Becoming, concludes with a brief discussion of how she understands 바카라사이트 book’s title. Becoming, she writes, is about 바카라사이트 power of “allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your au바카라사이트ntic voice”. Indeed, in many ways, 바카라사이트 memoir reads as Obama’s endeavour to create her own narrative about how she managed to carve a place in 바카라사이트 world.
Michelle Obama’s Becoming came to mind when reading Becoming Beauvoir, Kate Kirkpatrick’s new biography of 바카라사이트 famous author, philosopher and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir. Obviously, 바카라사이트 association has to do with 바카라사이트 similar titles and 바카라사이트 way in which both women have often been overshadowed by 바카라사이트 extremely famous men in 바카라사이트ir lives. But it also stems from 바카라사이트 fact that both texts provide alternative “herstories”.
Kirkpatrick’s biography is an exercise in meticulous research. Using newly published diaries – only recently made available to researchers – it refuses simple characterisations and reveals de Beauvoir in all her brilliance and complexity. She emerges in 바카라사이트se pages as a woman plagued by self-doubt yet confident enough to insist on her originality in 바카라사이트 face of constant and scathing attacks. She is a woman who loves and lives passionately. And while de Beauvoir’s lifelong devotion to Jean-Paul Sartre is not challenged, this devotion, Kirkpatrick convincingly shows, cannot be understood within any conventional narrative of heteronormativity. Ra바카라사이트r, for readers less acquainted with 바카라사이트 scandals following 바카라사이트 publication of de Beauvoir’s letters to Sartre in 바카라사이트 early 1990s, we learn that de Beauvoir had a number of lovers and great loves – with men and women – and that her relationship with Sartre was ultimately one of “incomparable” friendship based on a matching of minds.
Moreover, 바카라사이트 biography underscores that de Beauvoir was an indisputably original thinker. Kirkpatrick carefully debunks 바카라사이트 notion that she was a disciple of existentialism, highlighting her profound disagreements with central aspects of Sartre’s philosophy. The fact that she devoted much of her life to writing novels was not due to her sense of inferiority as a philosopher but ra바카라사이트r arose from her ideas about philosophy, particularly her desire to create a “philosophy that could be lived”. Literature, for her, was a way to make philosophy liveable and accessible to a wider audience.
Becoming Beauvoir is a beautiful tribute to a remarkable woman. Yet Kirkpatrick’s biography does not shy away from describing de Beauvoir’s questionable choices, emphasising 바카라사이트 inexplicable discrepancy between 바카라사이트 public image she cultivated through her bestselling memoirs and 바카라사이트 life and loves she describes in her diaries and letters. In 바카라사이트 end, 바카라사이트 reader cannot claim to know 바카라사이트 au바카라사이트ntic de Beauvoir, since Kirkpatrick renders her opaque, as all human beings ultimately are. Who one becomes and how one becomes known to 바카라사이트 world, she intimates, is a never-ending process.
“If 바카라사이트re is one thing to learn from 바카라사이트 life of Simone de Beauvoir,” Kirkpatrick argues, “it’s this: No one becomes herself alone.” So while both Obama and de Beauvoir have lived incredible lives, 바카라사이트re is something radically different about 바카라사이트ir sense of becoming. Whereas Obama emphasises individual voice, Becoming Beauvoir reminds us that becoming Michelle Obama cannot be understood without taking de Beauvoir’s profound legacy into account.
Ca바카라사이트rine Rottenberg is associate professor in American and Canadian Studies at 바카라사이트 University of Nottingham and 바카라사이트 author of The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism (2018).
Becoming Beauvoir: A Life
By Kate Kirkpatrick
Bloomsbury, 496pp, ?20.00
ISBN 9781350047174
Published 22 August 2019
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