Intellectual Texts

Question 1

What did Simone De Beauvoir in 1960 say the purpose of The Second Sex 1949 was?

Answer 1

The text was an attempt to explain “why a woman’s situation, still, even today, prevents her from exploring the world’s basic problems.”

Question 2

What does existentialism mean?

Answer 2

Existentialism = a catch-all term for philosophical belief we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives, our individual purpose not given to us by Gods, governments, teacher or other authorities

Question 3

What is CB Radford’s critique of the Second Sex?

Answer 3

• SDB is “guilty of painting women in her own colours”
• TSS is “primarily a middle-class document, so distorted by autobiographical influences, that the individual problems of the writer herself may assume an exaggerated importance in her discussion of femininity”

Question 4

What does Judith Butler say of TSS?

Answer 4

• SdB’s formulation that “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman” and the texts argument suggests ‘gender’ is an aspect of identity which is “gradually acquired”
• views The Second Sex as potentially providing a radical understanding of gender.

Question 5

What is the significance of the first French publication of SdB’s TSS selling c. 20k in 1 week?

Answer 5

• Clearly very popular and people interested in her perspective and suggests there was some credence to the view at this time and that it was authoritative?

Question 6

What does TSS being placed on the Vatican’s List of Prohibited Books and the Spanish-language translation (printed in Argentina) being banned in Francoist Spain in 1955?

Answer 6

• Clearly challenged the status quo and thought of as dangerous/a threat

Question 7

What is the significance of Spanish feminists smuggling in copies of TSS and circulating in secret?

Answer 7

clear desire for people to read but also hints at how oppressive some states where in terms of challenging gender stereotypes and conventions

Question 8

When was TSS published?

Answer 8

• 1949 in France

- Women get the vote 1944 but still very much second-class citizens at this point

Question 9

What was SDB’s relationship to Sartre?

Answer 9

Lifelong partnership with Sartre

Question 10

What was Aron’s relationship to Sartre?

Answer 10

Lifelong friendship/intellectual opponent with Sartre: “better to be wrong with Sartre than right with Aron”

Question 11

How does Aron differ from SdB and other prominent French intellectuals of the time such as Sartre?

Answer 11

Rational humanist - leader amongst those who didn’t embrace existentialism

Question 12

What was Aron’s upbringing (significant for informing his views)? (4)

Answer 12

• Teen during WWI, pacifist like most 1920s youth,
• Witnessed rise of Nazis in Berlin during 1930s,
• One of the fist to develop an analysis of totalitarianism and compare Stalinism and Hitlerism in 1930s,
• Part of French airforce during WWII upon defeated joined Free French forces in London

Question 13

How was Aron a voice of moderation in politics?

Answer 13

• saw ideologies as secular religions

- By 1950s very critical of Austrian school - viewed their obsession with private property as an “inverted Marxism”

Question 14

Historical context for Opium of the Intellectuals being written in 1955? (3)

Answer 14

Written at a time when:

• political elite in France divided over form of new republic,
• plagued by indecision surrounding decolonisation,
• and during Les Trentes Glorieuses when French economy revived and grew rapidly with US aid

Question 15

Why was Aron critical of Western Marxism and the New Left in post-war France?

Answer 15

• sees Marxism as opium of the intellectuals and encouraging moderacy

Question 16

Who was Marcuse?

Answer 16

German intellectual who studied with Heideger in 1920s/30s but fled to US and lived there til death following Hitler’s Rise

Question 17

What is One-Dimensional Man (1964)?

Answer 17

Social critique of capitalism - attempts to measure relative success of capitalism as a means for social organisation vs its stated goals of liberty and happiness

Question 18

What is the main argument of One-Dimensional Man (1964)?

Answer 18

Growth of technology/mechanisation/bureaucracy has, on the one hand, led to an increasing freedom from material want (at least in the West), but at the same time has led to decrasing amounts of personal freedom and individual agency

Question 19

What is key to note provenance wise about OD-M and Marcuse?

Answer 19

Marcuse lives in the US not in Western Europe though he is German originally

Question 20

What is the Wretched of the Earth (1961)?

Answer 20

Written by psychologist Franz Fanon

Psychological and psychiatric analysis of dehumanising effects of colonisation

Question 21

Significance of French Language title of the Wretched of the Earth (1961)?

Answer 21

French language title derive from left-wing anthem “The Internationalie” - standard of the socialist movement since late 19th century
Intl anthem of anarchists, communists, and socialists

Question 22

What does TSS say about religion?

Answer 22

• Prevents women from being liberated.
• Women’s subjugation and inferiority often justified and women forced to accept because of religion and the Church.
• Women need their own religion as people.
• LINK TO RISE OF CLD AND CONSERVATIVISM AND CONWAY’S THESIS OF RECONFESSIONALISATION OF EUROPE

Question 23

Why does Aron argue Marxism has become a replacement for Christianity? (3)

Answer 23

• More of secular religion than a scientific theory.
• Unlike other political ideologies its promises so absurd and demands of proponents so comprehensive that it functioned like a fanatical sect.
• Same blind faith in Marxism despite obvious evidence vs it that had often been said of Xianity

Question 24

Though it is a bit of a stretch, from Aron’s discussion in Opium, why could we see consumerism as a religious ideology too? (2)

Answer 24

• Can see consumerism as an ideology too (bit of a leap) because he says how US cold war ideology also dangerous and created secular religion.
• Draws parallels to USSR and says both have suppressed conditions of ideological debate/integrated the workers/imposed a unanimous adherence to the principles of the regime

Question 25

What does Sartre argue about collective liberation/emancipation? (3)

Answer 25

• the national revolution must be socialist. The unity of the third world is a work in progress because of this
• Colonised people need to come under the command of the peasant class - cref what we know about intellectuals and elite leading but lumpen the ones with revolutionary potential according to S
• shared violence vs settlers produces strong bonds between the natives and gives courage and resolve. Humanism and non-violence are not answers for the colonies seeking liberation.

Question 26

Why does SdB argue that “the liberation can only be collective”?

Answer 26

• she feels she is a special case bc she is isolated in her home and has no active contact with other women.”
• not possible or enough for women as individuals to be emancipated and liberated.
• CREF/LINK TO WOMEN IN THE HOME AT THIS TIME

Question 27

Why does Aron argue that Marxism and CP are hypocrites with regards to liberation and emancipation?

Answer 27

• as they promised salvation through violence and revolution but demanded total submission to the Party - parallels to Xianity
• CREF SS reality

Question 28

What does Aron argue about liberation and emancipation? (3)

Answer 28

• myth of the proletariat - nothing to suggest industrial workers are especially predestined to transform history in comparison to others. Arguably, if it is due to suffering, - the “chosen people” of PW period would not be Western proletarians but the victims of racial/ideological/religious persecution
• 20th century = century of racial/national wars rather than “class war” in classic sense of the word because proletarians less inclined to violence than nations being deprived of independence or races being treated as inferiors

Question 29

Why does Aron undermine theory of class struggle? (5)

Answer 29

• theory of class struggle predicated on a false analogy.
• Proletariat never actually had a conception of world opposed to that of the bourgeoisie.
• Proletarian regimes ow almost nothing to authentic w-c culture.
• Marxist ideology not really proletarian and revs of 20th century haven’t been either.
• Been thought up and carried out by bourgeois intellectuals.

Question 30

What does Aron suggest is the route to collective liberation/emancipation? (3)

Answer 30

• end of ideology and rejection of fanaticism.
• Through moderacy/scepticism of all systems and ideologies and rejection of subscribing to any single ideology/class/technique of action society would be free
• Two outcomes: intellectuals losing interest in politics or indifference - both positive and not necessarily harmful

Question 31

Why does SdB argue material conditions are necessary for freedom and how does she say they can be achieved? (4)

Answer 31

• Women must be financially emancipated from men through work but work in post-war Europe is not freedom for women.
• Renault women work but long to be housewives “they are economically independent only within an economically oppressed class.”
• Economic emancipation not enough: need a moral/social change in society and for people to acknowledge these constructs.
• “work today is not freedom. Only in a socialist world would the woman who has one be sure of the other. Today the majority of workers are exploited.” - but notes socialist revolution failed to deliver in its promise of equality for men/women

Question 32

What does Marcuse argue as the means to emancipation/collective liberation? (4)

Answer 32

• those least incorporated into the consumerist system were the only ones who could generate rebellion against it.
• Saw rebellions of 1960s youth and students who internalised his teachings as a testament to the disengenuinity of consumerist society - privileged generation grown up in prosperity individual needs ostensibly perfectly satisfied but still not satisfied
• false needs “superimposed on the individual by particular social interests in his repression” meaning no matter how much it has become an individual’s needs/they identify with them/are satisfied by it they will always be the product of a repressive society.
• True needs harder to define but had to be “answered” by the individual but so long as they were indoctrinated/manipulated/kept incapable of being autonomous the answer couldn’t truly be their own - need for two-dimensional thinking for liberation

Question 33

What does Fanon argue is necessary for collective liberation/emancipation? (2)

Answer 33

• violence is a precondition to liberation because the inferiority of the colonised is an assumption and psychological reality of colonial life thus a revolutionary violence is a shock to the entire system that shocks the colonised into awareness of their own potential and makes them able to for a wide identity
• the system cannot survive the shock of violence as it is essential to the three classes of colonised life

Question 34

What are the reasons Fanon gives for the system being unable to survive the shock of violence and his explanation of it emancipating and liberating? (5)

Answer 34

• Workers see system they are dependent on begin to collapse - exploitation becomes a site of resistance, rather than something to be endured for sake of material needs
• Colonised intellectual is exposed as a counter-revolutionary and a key element in the oppressive system
• Lumpen find an identity for the first time, moving from disposable excess to anti-colonialsm’s most potent revolutionary force
• Elimination of the colonial system at the level of imagination and of material reality i.e how coloniser-colonised relations are naturalised as superiority and inferiority, i.e. exploitative relations of subordination and extraction
• Formation of cultural, social, and political identities

Question 35

What supports Radford’s critique of TSS as a middle-class text removed from the reality of working-class women and the critique that SDB is overly critical of them and doesn’t understand the reality of their situation? (2)

Answer 35

• Suggests that women can be emancipated and freed through work but is critical of the work w-c women do, and advocates emancipation, and denotes worthwhile activities as those unattainable outside the high bourgeoisie and aristocracy for women at this time
• Says for the women who work in a Renault factory the work they do is denigratory as “tasks carried out in a factory do not free them from household chores”

Question 36

What are Aron’s key critiques of the Western leftist intellectuals in Opium?

Answer 36

• critical of intellectuals overlooking Marxism’s track record of totalitarian rule/mass violence/suppression of liberty/induction of poverty but are “merciless towards the failings of post-war liberal democracies.”
• hypocrisy of Leftist demands for liberty of western colonial states in Africa and Asia but not for those in Eastern Bloc - ignoring the oppression of communist regimes on people.

Question 37

What is the distinction between two-dimensional thinking and one-dimensional thinking, and why is one-dimensional thinking an issue for Marcuse? (2)

Answer 37

• two-dimensional thinking sees the contradictions by which society is constituted and is aware of forces of domination. One-dimensional thinking produces a one-dimensional society by whittling down critical, two-dimensional consciousness.
• Citizens think they are freer than they really are, provides them with enough to keep them pacifified, means victims identify with their oppressors and eliminates political discourse - makes contradictions invisible

Question 38

What does Marcuse argue is the distinction between true needs and false needs? (2)

Answer 38

• False needs - imposed on individuals by the system - needs which “perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery, and injustice” and serve to distract people from recognising the larger social ills that gave rise to these “needs” in the first place.
• True needs are the basic needs of life and the “progressive alleviation of toil and poverty”

Question 39

What for Marcuse is the issue with capitalism and why is it repressive and problematic? (3)

Answer 39

• capitalism enabled great increases in production, but at the cost of ever-increasing toil and concentration of wealth with the privileged few
• capitalism and technological advances rob workers of their humanity and turns them into repressed cogs in the service of corporate greed
• American consumerism made people slaves to the machinations of corporate society. Intoxicating effect on the masses of the technological advances “enjoyed” by the West and their exploitation by the elite rendered the people mentally incapable of resisting the controlling nature of the u-cs.

Question 40

How does Fanon reimagine Marxist conceptions of class for the colonial setting?

Answer 40

• the worker is dependent on the coloniser as their material needs are supplied by the colonial system, naturally revolutionary relationship because they are exploited by the coloniser but the coloniser is also dependent on them.
• the colonised intellectual mediates the relation of the colonised for the coloniser thus they play a crucial role in cultural renewal and political resistance because of the role they play aiding and abetting the coloniser.
• the colonial lumpenproletariat are disposable populations that provide nothing to the colonial system thus making them the greatest threat to the system.

Question 41

What is Sartre’s key critique of Europe and Europeans and why does he say they are being decolonised? (3)

Answer 41

• Europeans are being decolonised, “the settler in everyone of us being savagely rooted out”.
• Crime of Europe’s self-obsessive commitment to consumerism made wors by hypocrisy that went with it because of its view of its colonial subjects.
• Self-congratulatory rhetoric about liberty/freedom/equality while also denigrating and dehumanising others.

Question 42

What does Fanon note about the youth?

Answer 42

• the younger generation of Europeans has challenged the older generation on the racist methods of their humanist claims.

Question 43

How does Sartre comment on the selective misremembering of Europeans? (2)

Answer 43

• Argues for the Need to set aside rituals of traditional Europe to critique its failings.
• Namely the Self-congratulatory rhetoric about liberty freedom equality etc while also denigrating and dehumanising others

Question 44

What does Aron criticise as the selective memory and wilful misremembering of the Left?

Answer 44

myth of single/unified left. Not a cohesive unified group. Various different Lefts who viewed themselves as true left with different views.

Question 45

Why/how does Aron question whether consumerism and capitalism are bad? (3)

Answer 45

• working-class higher living standards in the West.
• consumerism not a bad thing.
• Questions notion it is blocking them from liberation when maybe deep down they want a certain amount of progressidentified through materialism.

Question 46

How is One-Dimensional man influenced by Marxist thought in Marcuse’s views on consumer modernity and capitalism? (3)

Answer 46

• the systems developed to promote “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” also necessarily undermined the achievement of those ends. “The achievement cancels the premises.”
• Capitalism divorced individual from his natural role in society and deprived him of his freedom to fulfil his destiny.
• Material goods developed ostensibly to ease his existence instead made him passive and a more efficient instrument of management, and a more pliable tool for exploitation by capital and government, with the distinction between the latter two becoming increasingly non-existent.

Question 47

What does Fanon argue about consumer modernity and why does he believe it to be repressive and how is he influenced by Marx?

Answer 47

• colonial system relationship of worker that of dependency because of material needs being supplied but also exploiting the worker.
• Colonial lumpen are disposable provide nothing to this system so its greatest threat. Those whom modernity has not reached.

Question 48

How is TSS vs idea that there are essential differences between men and women predetermined by biology and presents a radical view of gender as constructs?

Answer 48

• “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman.” “the idea of femininity is artificially defined by customs and fashion; it is imposed on every woman from the outside.”
• Women lack agency and behaviour deemed as innately feminine is not biologically predetermined but suggested in negative form by her situation.

Question 49

What does SdB argue about sexuality?

Answer 49

says that there is a double moral standard when it comes to sexuality where prostitution makes the women immoral and not the male customers

Question 50

Why does SdB argue women have no choice and are forced to pursue things which affirm stereotypes and cannot pursue things actually worthwhile?

Answer 50

• Says because women aren’t allowed to do things they “stubbornly pursue the impossible quest for being through narcissism, love, or religion.”
• DeB means that women are restricted from intellectualism and pondering things like social injustice when she says they aren’t allowed to do anything

Question 51

Why does SdB think women are not able to choose to be mothers, motherhood is something imposed on them - example of suggested in negative form by her situation - only through rejecting this can women be freed? (4)

Answer 51

• Impossible to be completely free through motherhood
• Motherhood not a real choice, lack agency because of the situation where in France abortion is painful and costly because criminalised, and for those unable to do this they are “burdened with a child” and “ruins” their professional life
• De Beauvoir says “social norms do not allow the woman to procreate as she pleases” because of social stigma surrounding premarital sex for women specifically - similar to the prostitution thing “it is for her to shoulder all of males’ immorality”
• De Beauvoir says it is rare for women to be mothers without “Accepting the chains of marriage or lowering herself” and that lack of well-organised support means childcare prevents women from doing other things - writing in 1949, definitely the case at this point but changes
• LINK TO EASTERN EUROPE AND WESTERN EUROPE GENDER STUFF

Question 52

Why does SdB think women can’t understand broader/more important things in life and more worthwhile pursuits?

Answer 52

because women are prevented from “participating in history” and so settles for “horribly vague knowledge when it concerns her”

Question 53

How is SdB’s view of women’s character negative?

Answer 53

• She believes there is truth to affirmation of misogynistic stereotypes but believes not their fault as they lack agency.

Question 54

How does SdB undermine the agency of women and suggests all her choices are not her own and even her own body is against her and limiting her? (3)

Answer 54

• “Her body escapes her, it betrays her, it is her most intimate reality, but it is a shameful reality that she keeps hidden”
• “If she avidly pursues sexual pleasure, it is often because she is frustrated; sexually unsatisfied, destined to male brutality.”
• “For a women to accomplish her femininity she is required to be object and prey; that is she must renounce her claims as a sovereign subject.”

Question 55

What does SdB argue about men and masculinity> (2)

Answer 55

• argues that men are not constrained by social constructs like women are. FALSE.
• But also argues they encourage “faults” of women to “maintain the hierarchy of the sexes” and to enable them to “Scorn her”