This article argues that Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex continues to teach academic feminism why difference feminism holds productive and generative potential for feminists and why equality feminism has been consistently subject to criticism since the second wave of feminism. Using Hegel's master—slave dialectic as a lens to interpret subjectivity in The Second Sex, this text reveals an aspect of equality feminism that relies upon masculine subjectivity, a subjectivity that inherently constitutes otherness. This reliance on masculine subjectivity is anathema (...) to difference feminism because the otherness inherently constituted by such subjectivity simultaneously and paradoxically constitutes women's ongoing subordination. In assuming equality with men by adopting masculine subjectivity, women are not immune to constituting women as other. Difference feminisms, on the other hand, start from where women are as they choose to see themselves socially, economically, racially, sexually. The Second Sex reveals that difference feminisms imagine freedom in order to identify the difference that would empower women, not strictly towards sex equality with a stable referent, but towards emancipatory projects that make a difference for women themselves. The Second Sex portends that such imagined freedom has not been actualized, thus the present remains circumscribed by power that subordinates the difference in question. When read alongside The Second Sex, the tension between equality and difference feminisms can still be read as feminisms that coexist with one another, each with their limitations, each with productive potential and cautionary rejoinders. (shrink)

The title of this article refers to Beauvoir's essay Must We Burn De Sade?. Analogous to Beauvoir's essay on Sade, this article is something of an apology for Foucault. I use Beauvoir's essay on Sade to discuss Foucault's concept of ethics as an art of living. I conclude that the final Foucault's thought on ethics can be labelled a post-existentialism, combining postmodern thinking and the issues of freedom and commitment in an inspiring way. I argue, however, that the heuristics of (...) Foucault's later work is undertheorized. Comparing Foucault's approach with Beauvoir's own concept of ethics as art of living shows hers to be superior in that it has a place for the emotions. The cold stoicism of the final Foucault only deals with emotion from the point of view of repression and sublimation. Foucault's post-existentialism must therefore be enriched with Beauvoir's concepts. I conclude that aspects of the theoretical frameworks of both Foucault and Beauvoir can contribute to the solution of some of the dilemmas of postmodern thinking with respect to politics and political theory. (shrink)

This paper problematizes the claim that Michel Foucault's work is normatively lacking and therefore possesses only limited political relevance. While Foucault does not articulate a traditional normative framework for political activity, I argue that his work nonetheless reflects certain normative commitments to, for example, practicing freedom and improving the state of the world. I elucidate these commitments by sketching out Foucault's notion of critique as a mode of existence characterized by practices of the self, arguing that such practices possess political (...) significance within the context of what Foucault refers to as a way of life, and analyzing points of intersection and departure between Kant's and Foucault's respective responses to the question `What is Enlightenment?' in order to clarify the connection Foucault makes between self-practices and freedom. Through this analysis I also show that Foucault reconceptualizes normative concepts such as obligation, freedom, autonomy and publicity in non-normalizing, politically compelling ways, and argue that his work opens onto a similar reconceptualization of the notion of political unity. I conclude with a preliminary investigation into the political efficacy of Foucault's ethos by discussing its relevance specifically for feminist politics. (shrink)