Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter, Marso Lori Jo

In Politics with Beauvoir Lori Jo Marso treats Simone de Beauvoirs feminist theory and practice as part of her political theory, arguing that freedom is Beauvoirs central concern and that this is best apprehended through Marsos notion of the encounter. Starting with Beauvoirs political encounters with several of her key contemporaries including Hannah Arendt, Robert Brasillach, Richard Wright, Frantz Fanon, and Violette Leduc, Marso also moves beyond historical context to stage encounters between Beauvoir and others such as Chantal Akerman, Lars von Trier, Rahel Varnhagen, Alison Bechdel, the Marquis de Sade, and Margarethe von Trotta. From intimate to historical, always affective though often fraught and divisive, Beauvoirs encounters, Marso shows, exemplify freedom as a shared, relational, collective practice. Politics with Beauvoir gives us a new Beauvoir and a new way of thinking about politics—as embodied and coalitional.