Women’s isolation from each other blocks recognition that their subjectivity struggles are shared

Evidence

Why is it that some women experience their subjectivity and fi nd in this experience a resource for resistance to the forces that alienate them from their subjectivity? Why is it that other women either lack this experience of authentic subjectivity or do not fi nd it grounds for resistance? Attending to these questions brings us to Beauvoir’s concept of the appeal. For at least part of her answer is that it is women’s isolation from each other that isolates them from their experienced subjectivity— that for these individual experiences to be felt as something other than an individual aberration, a woman must discover that her experience of subjectivity is shared by other women. Th is discovery is essential for political action; for if it is the case that it is as individuals that we are responsible for unmasking the structures of oppression, it is also and necessarily the case that undoing these structures requires collective action— the appeal. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 73

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Beauvoir’s concept of the ‘appeal’ as the collective recognition of shared subjectivity that enables political action.
• XREF: Connects to the general arc of existentialist ethics of collective action in The Ethics of Ambiguity and to feminist consciousness-raising models of the 1960s-70s. — connects to: Women’s oppression differs from class oppression because women share solidarity with their oppressors — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 147; Women’s class loyalties fragment them more than shared sex unites them. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 277; Uninstitutionalized relationships between women allow fuller self-exposure than heterosexual ones — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1076 (+8 more)