Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-wxhwt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T00:14:28.592Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Generosity: Between Love and Desire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Rosalyn Diprose
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

“Safe sex” discourse attempts to protect women from dangers assumed inherent in erotic life, such as domination, submissiveness, and loss of freedom and self-control. However, Beauvoir's and Merleau-Ponty's revision of Sartre's ontology suggests that erotic life involves a kind of generosity that transforms existence; sex neither liberates personal existence nor poses a necessary threat to women's freedom. I also reconsider the conditions under which sex is assumed to involve a violation of being.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , Winter 1998 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beauvoir, Simone de 1972. The second sex. Trans. Parshley, H. M.Harmondsworth: Penguin .Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1994. The ethics of ambiguity. Trans. Frechtman, Bernard. New York: Citadel Press.Google Scholar
Bergoffen, Debra B. 1995. Out from under: Beauvoir's philosophy of the erotic. In Feminist interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Simons, Margaret A.University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1997. The phibsophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered phenomenobgies, erotic generosities. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith 1989. Sexual ideology and phenomenological description: A feminist critique of Merleau‐Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. In The thinking muse: Feminism and modem French philosophy, ed. Allen, Jeffher and Marion Young, Iris. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chanter, Tina 1995. Ethics of eros: Irigaray's rewriting of the phibsophers. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Collins, Margery, and Pierce, Christine 1980 (1976). Holes and slime: Sexism in Sartre's psychoanalysis. In Women and phihsophy: Toward a theory of liberation, ed. Gould, Carol and Wartofsky, Marx. New York: Perigee Books.Google Scholar
Descartes, René. 1985. The passions of the soul. In The phibsophical writings of Descartes, volume 1. Trans. Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert, and Murdoch, Dugold. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Diprose, Rosalyn 1994a. The bodies of women: Ethics, embodiment and sexual difference. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1994b. Performing body‐identity. Writings on Dance 11/12: 6–15.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Ann 1984. Sex war: The debate between radical and libertarian feminists. Signs 10(1): 106–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gatens, Moira 1991. Feminism and phibsophy: Perspectives on difference and equality. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Grosz, Elizabeth 1994. Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Jeffreys, Sheila 1990. Sexology and Antifeminism. And Eroticizing women's subordination. In The Sexual liberals and the attack onfeminism, ed. Leidholdt, Dorchen and Raymond, Janice G.New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Kaite, Berkeley 1987. The pornographic body double: Transgression is the law. In Body invaders: Panic sex in America, ed. Arthur, and Kroker, Marilouise. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Kruks, Sonia 1990. Situation and human existence: Freedom, subjectivity and society. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Kruks, Sonia. 1991. Simone de Beauvoir: Teaching Sartre about freedom. In Sartre alive, ed. Aronson, R. and Ver De Hoven, A.Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Langer, Monika 1994. A philosophical retrieval of Simone de Beauvoir's Pour une morale de l'ambiguite. Philosophy Today 36: 181–90.Google Scholar
Leidholdt, Dorchen, and Raymond, Janice G., ed. 1990. The sexual liberals and the attack on feminism. New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, Genevieve 1993. The man ofreason: “Mule” and “female” in Western philosophy. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, Catriona 1986. Simone de Beauvoir: philosophy and/or the female body. In Feminist challenges: Social and political theory, ed, Pateman, Carole and Gross, Elizabeth. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
MacKinnon, Catharine A. 1990. Liberalism and the death of feminism. In The sexual liberals and the attack on feminism, ed. Leidholdt, Dorchen and Raymond, Janice G.New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Thomas 1996. Sartre, sadism and female beauty ideals. Australian Feminist Studies 11(24): 243–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice 1962. Phenomenology of perception. Trans. Smith, Colin. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Merleau‐Ponty, Maurice. 1964. The child's relations with others. In The pimy of perception, ed. Edie, James. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Moi, Toril 1992. Ambiguity and alienation in The second sex. boundary 219(12): 96–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadeau, Chantal 1995. Girls on a wired screen: Cavani cinema and lesbian sadomas‐ochism. In Sexy bodies, ed. Grosz, Elizabeth and Prohyn, Elspeth. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Pilardi, Jo‐Ann. 1989. Female eroticism in the works of Simone de Beauvoir. In The thinking muse: Feminism and modern French philosophy, ed. Allen, Jeffner and Marion Young, Iris. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sartre, Jean‐Paul. 1989 [1958]. Being and nothingness. Trans. Barnes, Hazel E., New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sawicki, Jana 1988. Identity politics and sexual freedom. In Foucault and feminism, ed. Diamond, Irene and Quinhy, Lee. Boston: Northwestern University Press.Google Scholar
Stock, Wendy 1990. Toward a feminist praxis of sexuality. In The sexual liberals and the attack on feminism, ed. Leidholdt, Dorchen and Raymond, Janice G.New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Vasseleu, Cathryn 1997. Textures of light: Vision and touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau‐Ponty. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion 1990. Throwing like a girl. In Throwing like a girl and other essays in feminist philosophy and social theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar