Edinburgh University Press Anonymity and Feminist Identity: Simone de Beauvoir’s Agon and Ours

Situates anonymity with respect to women’s demands for recognition from one another despite differences of class, ethnicity and sexuality Addresses anonymity as an overdetermined and complex phenomenon at the interstices of various discourses and technologies Draws on social psychology and different strains of psychoanalysis to interpret problems of competition and agonism between women in personal and political life Situates Simone de Beauvoir’s distinctive philosophy of individuation, including phenomenological investigations of the genesis of intersubjectivity and historical reflections on techniques for publicity and privacy Draws on recent legal theory and sociology, as well as Hannah Arendt’s critique of manufactured superfluousness, to distinguish anonymity from privacy Proposes a distinctive interpretation of 'conversion' in Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity Anonymity is a condition that both intrigues and terrifies us. Such emotions reflect historical inequities of power as well as the limits of human cognition and imagination. How do they affect women’s relationships at the emotional, philosophical, and political level? How might they inflect women’s responses to bullying, economic and academic competition, and even philosophical teaching and writing? Laura Hengehold uses Simone de Beauvoir’s novels and philosophical texts to provide insights into women’s hopes and fears regarding anonymity, while also acknowledging their desire to be recognized in a definitive sense as these particular human beings. In an age of rapidly changing identification technologies, Beauvoir’s works turn our attention to women’s ongoing struggles to individuate from one another and from men, in defiance of the presuppositions that resources and attention are scarce goods.