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The Somatic Sex: Bodies In Beauvoir's Aesthetic Politics, Melissa Moskowitz

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I seek to complicate traditional readings of embodiment in the work of Simone de Beauvoir by positing an alternative reading that stresses somaticism. Positioning myself within the tradition of historical political thought I track Beauvoir’s intellectual development to demonstrate that reading Beauvoirian bodies within the framework of phenomenological embodiment only discloses part of Beauvoir’s theoretical interests. Whereas the traditional conception of Beauvoirian bodies largely derives from a phenomenological vernacular, primarily concentrated on the notion of embodied consciousness, I advance a complimentary but alternative reading located within contemporary somatic discourses. By reading Beauvoir’s early interests as somatic I …