un enfant gonflé d’âge
Gosh, isn’t Simone de Beauvoir so saucy? Listen to how she jaunts this fellow Claude Mauriac in The Second Sex:
Claude Mauriac - whose great originality is admired by all - could (or at least thought he could) write regarding woman: “We listen on a tone of polite indifference…to the most brilliant among them, well knowing that her wit reflects more or less luminously ideas that come from us.” Evidently the speaker referred to is not reflecting the ideas of Mauriac himself, for no one knows of his having any. […] What is really remarkable is that by using the questionable we he identifies himself with St. Paul, Hegel, Lenin, and Nietzche, and from the lofty eminence of their grandeur looks down disdainfully upon the bevy of women who make bold to converse with him on a footing of equality. In truth, I know of more than one woman who would refuse to suffer with patience Mauriac’s “tone of polite indifference.”
And that’s only the introduction! There are 700 or so more pages of sass to go, not to mention all the groundbreaking analysis on the conditions of “becoming woman”.
Also, here she and Sartre are having a staring contest to see who hemorrhages first under the objectifying look of the Other. Sartre just seems like he’s cheating because of his somewhat lazy eye.
October 11th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
what’s up with the all-white outfits? they look like futurepeople.
October 11th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
they look like scientists who are up to something fishy.
October 12th, 2005 at 1:28 am
futurepeople?
you must mean the new mira. the one who sold out the rotary phone!
October 12th, 2005 at 6:44 am
hey, who said my cell phone was with buttons and not the big huge dial we’ve all loved and lost?
October 12th, 2005 at 8:35 am
apparently there are people who can make the clicking noises that a rotary phone makes, so they can just pick up phones and dial with their mouths (because the system recognizes the clicks either way).
isn’t that amazing?
Joey Comeau just screams at the Blockbuster auto-reminder phone system until he randomly hits a dialtone note and it passes him to a new menu item. This makes him sound like a crazy person.
I think that the vocal synthesis of telecommunications protocols is the real being-unto-itself, I mean, what could be more existential than exercising your right to pretend you are a computer?
October 13th, 2005 at 1:14 am
Jer,
you are a shameless comsnerd.
October 30th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Sartre n’avait pas la vocation de la monogamie ; il se plaisait dans la compagnie des femmes qu’ils trouvaient moins comiques que les hommes ; il n’entendait pas, à vingt-trois ans, renoncer pour toujours à leur séduisante diversité. Entre nous, m’expliquait-il en utilisant un vocabulaire qui lui était cher, il s’agit d’un amour nécessaire : il convient que nous connaissions des amours contingentes. Nous étions d’une même espèce et notre entente durerait autant que nous : elle ne pouvait suppléer aux éphémères richesses des rencontres avec des êtres différents ; comment consentirions-nous, délibérément, à ignorer la gamme des étonnements, des regrets, des nostalgies, des plaisirs que nous étions capables aussi de ressentir ? Là-dessus nous réfléchîmes longuement, au cours de nos promenades.
La force de l’age - Simone de Beauvoir