Porcelain Publishing / CT / Volume 1 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.47297/wspct2017010208
ARTICLE

After Transcending“the Second”: An Ecocritical Reading of Simone de Beauvoir

Qingqi Wei1
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1 Nanjing Normal University, China
© Invalid date by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Abstract

In her monograph The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir analyzes and develops the interpretative framework in which women are taken as “the other” and which is to be one of the theoretical sources of ecofeminism: the patriarchal system distinguish the self and other so that the transcending subjectivity frees itself from the confinement of body/nature. Birth and maternity were classified as the “second”, women together with nature have been the object to be transcended, excluded and dominated by patriarchal discourse.Yet de Beauvoir fails to go beyond dualism in that her way of redemption demands that women overcome their naturality. This transcendence does not go beyond the Western concept of linear progress which will help women's liberation at least. There are also buds of harmonious thoughts in de Beauvoir's writing, revealing the path of a real transcendence: the elimination of dualistic domination and the final men/women and man/nature reconciliation.

Keywords
ecofeminism
Simone de Beauvoir
The Second Sex
nature
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Critical Theory, Electronic ISSN: 2753-5193 Print ISSN: 2515-4702, Published by Porcelain Publishing