2019 marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of the Second Sex written by a famous French philosopher, writer, and feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir. For many women, the book had been a genuine revelation, halfway between an overwhelming awareness of the global condition of women and the need for emancipation that this text-manifesto contains implicitly. For the first time, the differences between women and men were analyzed as the product of historicized knowledge, always and already culturally situated and socially determined by the patriarchal order.

The science itself contributes to maintaining the power hierarchies between women and men, by making the former the eternal auxiliaries of the latter. In this inspiring and revolutionary book, nothing escapes bold and shrewd analysis, which lists uncompromisingly the forms of women’s subjugation.

At this conference dedicated to the modalities of reception of the work of Simone de Beauvoir in today’s’ world, the EHU would like to discuss the relevance of her texts and theoretical propositions for understanding contemporary realities. Rethinking the feminist heritage of Simone de Beauvoir, through the prism of the post/feminist condition, one has to take into account the decades of feminist practices and achievements – political as well as theoretical. If to compare with the social and economic context of the 1940s, when Second Sex was published, the situation has considerably changed. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote, ”capabilities are clearly manifested only when they have been realized”. These words better, than any other, characterize that what we refer to as ”postfeminist condition”.

The tentative list of topics may include, but is not limited by the following themes:

The legacy of Simone de Beauvoir in contemporary feminist thought and philosophy
“Women Take Issue”: feminist activism in the networked society
Feminist intellectual and creative work in the age of precarious labor: challenges, opportunities, spaces of collaboration.
Postfeminist sensibility in contemporary cinema and fiction
The languages of resistance: from literary texts to the “language of new media”
“Equality as Quality”: Gender studies of neoliberal academia and education
Post/Feminism in Postsocialist context: social challenges, activist practices, feminist research agenda.

For more details please follow the direct link.