Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Simone de Beauvoir and the Ambiguity of Childhood

Simone de Beauvoir and the Ambiguity of Childhood <jats:p> This article explores Simone de Beauvoir's conceptualization of childhood and its importance for her existentialist thought. Beauvoir's theorization of childhood, I argue, offers a sophisticated portrayal of the child and of the adult–child relationship: the child is not a normal ‘other’ for the adult, but what I call a temporal other, perceived by adults as an ambiguous being; in turn, childhood is conceptualized as the origin of the ambiguity of adulthood. This foregrounding of childhood has important implications for Beauvoir's existentialism, in particular regarding her ethics. Through the adult–child relationship, her vision of an ethical relation to otherness emerges — one which foregrounds both the violence and the mutual liberation involved in encounters with the other. </jats:p> http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Paragraph Edinburgh University Press

Simone de Beauvoir and the Ambiguity of Childhood

Paragraph , Volume 38 (3): 329 – Nov 1, 2015

Loading next page...
 
/lp/edinburgh-university-press/simone-de-beauvoir-and-the-ambiguity-of-childhood-06vcVg6QLM

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2015
Subject
Literary Studies
ISSN
0264-8334
eISSN
1750-0176
DOI
10.3366/para.2015.0171
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

<jats:p> This article explores Simone de Beauvoir's conceptualization of childhood and its importance for her existentialist thought. Beauvoir's theorization of childhood, I argue, offers a sophisticated portrayal of the child and of the adult–child relationship: the child is not a normal ‘other’ for the adult, but what I call a temporal other, perceived by adults as an ambiguous being; in turn, childhood is conceptualized as the origin of the ambiguity of adulthood. This foregrounding of childhood has important implications for Beauvoir's existentialism, in particular regarding her ethics. Through the adult–child relationship, her vision of an ethical relation to otherness emerges — one which foregrounds both the violence and the mutual liberation involved in encounters with the other. </jats:p>

Journal

ParagraphEdinburgh University Press

Published: Nov 1, 2015

There are no references for this article.