A New Dawn for the Second Sex
Women's Freedom Practices in World Perspective
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Amsterdam University Press
Published:2nd Jan '17
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
To what extent is Simone de Beauvoir's study The Second Sex still relevant? From her work it emerges that patriarchy is a many-headed monster. Over the past decades, various heads of this monster have been slayed: important breakthroughs have been achieved by and for women in law, politics, and economics. Today, however, we witness movements in the opposite direction, such as a masculinist political revival in different parts of the world, the spread of the neoliberal myth of the Super Woman, the rise of transnational networks of trafficking in women and children, and a new international 'Jihadism'. This suggests that patriarchy is indeed a Hydra: a multi-headed monster that grows several new heads every time one head is cut off. Since different - often hybrid - heads of patriarchy dominate in different settings, feminism requires a variety of strategies. Women's movements all over the world today are critically creating new models of self and society in their own contexts. Drawing on notions of Beauvoir, as well as Michel Foucault, this book outlines a 'feminism in a new key' which consists of women's various freedom practices, each hunting the Hydra in their own key - but with mutual support.
"One of the most important contributions of A New Dawn for the Second Sex is that it captures the current tensions in feminist discussions regarding the colonial and imperial legacy of Western feminism. (...) Vintges’s work is a timely intervention and an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on understanding the plurality of feminist practices, especially in non-Western geographies."
- Deniz Durmus, Simone de Beauvoir Studies 30 (2019)
"[Karen Vintges's] book interacts in a very innovative way with the thinking of Simone Beauvoir and Michel Foucault ... Her book certainly provides her readers with profound and relevant issues for the present era, especially for the refinement of the dialogical dimension between cultures and the various customs outlined in her book."
- Magda Guadalupe dos Santos, VirtuaJus— Belo Horizonte, v.13 2017
"Vintges's A New Dawn for the Second Sex represents a valuable addition to feminist scholarship. Replete with metaphors and imagery, Vintges contributes an original and detailed understanding of feminist ethical and political life projects that embraces a global plurality of critical and creative feminisms."
- Rose Trappes, hypatia reviews online, a journal of feminist philosophy, 2017
"This is a pioneering and audacious book about a topic that is "lived" and "thought" worldwide."
- Siep Stuurman / author of The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History, Harvard University Press, 2017
"De auteur slaagt erin om abstracte begrippen, filosofische problemen en theoretische argumentaties toegankelijk en helder uiteen te zetten, onder meer door toelichting met concrete, 'real life' voorbeelden en casussen."
- Veronica Vasterling, Professor Philosophy & Gender, Radboud University Nijmegen
"An outstanding and ground-breaking book with huge potential for further research. Comprehensive in scope and meticulous in detail, the book is a rare combination of in-depth analysis and wide coverage. A much needed book."
- Fatima Sadiqi, Author of Moroccan Feminist Discourses, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 and Women, Language and Gender in Morocco, Brill 2003
"In A New Dawn for the Second Sex, Karen Vintges gives a new spin to the discussion about the positon of the woman."
- Francsca Wals, NRC 2017
"We are excited to share the news of an excellent new book in the Beauvoir tradition. Karen Vintges' A New Dawn for the Second Sex (AUP 2017) is deeply rooted in a sound understanding of Beuvoir's thought, and carries her project further into dialogue with today's realities for women, as she should have wanted."
- Newsletter from the Simone de Beauvoir Society, 2017)
ISBN: 9789089646026
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
196 pages