Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” – an exhibition – Munich

Her gaze is penetrating. Serious, resolute and a bit cold, Simone de Beauvoir looks from a large poster at all those approaching the exhibition in her honor on the ground floor of the Literature House – and also those who would rather turn off quickly for a coffee in the brasserie. Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) would understand, after all, the famous writer, philosopher, feminist, existentialist once sat around in Paris coffee houses all day long. But would she approve of it?

After all, the subject that has been on her mind for many years and works and that is being dealt with in this exhibition is still of the greatest importance. In her main work “Le Deuxième Sexe” (“The Second Sex”) from 1949, Simone de Beauvoir dealt with the situation of women in society in a groundbreaking way.

With unprecedented radicalism, she described our world as “the product of men” and coined the famous phrase “On ne naît pas femme, on le devient” – you are not born a woman, you become one. However, that was more than 70 years ago. How exactly are de Beauvoir’s theses to be understood – and, more importantly, what do they mean for our present?

A lot can be seen after a tour of the Literature House. There, the exhibition taken over from the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, which focused on biography and reception (in gray all around the walls), was supplemented with multimedia comments on the main work (in red cubes in the middle). This is clearly solved in terms of design – and even playfully supplemented by a few bistro tables and chairs.

The fact that a few of them are turned away in an alienating way or placed on pedestals may seem a bit silly, but overall you can actually feel some coffee house lightness. The fact that a few mirrors invite us to look at ourselves makes it abundantly clear: this isn’t about mustiness from the day before yesterday, it’s about the here and now.

Even then, in the existentialist Parisian scene of the 1940s and 1950s around Simone de Beauvoir and her partner Jean-Paul Sartre, there was no question of mustiness. Everyone, from the writer Albert Camus to the artist Alberto Giacometti (whose tiny sculpture of de Beauvoir’s head is almost overlooked in the room) met here with rank, names or at least ideas for the magazine Les Temps Modernes had; the music for the many lyrics was provided by Juliette Gréco’s chansons or Miles Davis’ jazz, as photos and record covers show. Here Simone de Beauvoir became increasingly aware: “This world is a man’s world, my youth was fed with myths invented by men, and I had by no means reacted to them as if I had been a boy.”

Tirelessly writing: Simone de Beauvoir 1945.

(Photo: Collection Harlingue / Roger Viollet/Gallimard / Collection Sylvie le Bon de Beauvoir)

She responded with a mega book. In “Le Deuxième Sexe” she dealt with the question of what makes a woman on more than 900 pages. She made a distinction between biological and social gender: biologically one is born a woman, but the development that follows depends on society and is changeable. Simone de Beauvoir concluded and demanded: Every woman must be allowed to develop freely – and with equal rights – instead of “taking on the role of the other” in a male-dominated world and “solidifying” into an object.

You are not born a woman, you become one? In a video of the exhibition, sociologist Imke Schmincke confirms that no sentence is quoted more often in gender studies. How the relationship between body and society should be defined is still the subject of some bitter debates to this day. The fact that de Beauvoir’s theses triggered violent reactions even then is made clear not only by the more than 20,000 letters she received from readers. They also inspired her to write another book, “La Femme Rompue” (“A Broken Woman”), which can be admired in the exhibition as a magnificent volume with etchings by her sister Hélène.

With beautiful editions and a wall full of translations, the exhibition pays homage above all to de Beauvoir’s main work, the importance of which should not be underestimated. “‘The Second Sex’ deserves a place alongside other fundamental works of modernity,” said the British author Sarah Bakewell, “alongside Charles Darwin, alongside Karl Marx and alongside Sigmund Freud.” Maybe it’s just a matter of time. But perhaps Simone de Beauvoir remains too radical for many.

Because she also provoked as an activist, as the exhibition makes clear. In the 1970s she was a leader in the French women’s movement. In 1971 she signed the famous public statement “I have had an abortion” by 343 women who died in New Observer was printed; an action that was repeated a little later in Germany by her friend Alice Schwarzer: one of the rare examples of the famous one starThe June 6, 1971 issue is on view in the exhibition, as is a film by Schwarzer showing de Beauvoir in close-up.

Critical tones can also be heard

It is a credit to the exhibition that it does not limit itself to such biographical and work-historical classifications, but also dares to take a close-up look at the main work “The Second Sex”. For this additional part, Tanja Graf and Anna Seethaler, directors of the Literaturhaus, have won over the journalist Iris Radisch as curators: In several videos, the texts of which the visitors are kindly able to get their hands on, she unravels the main aspects of the book, supplemented by statements by younger scientists and scholars authors.

In these voices, such as the authors Julia Korbik and Stefanie Lohaus or the literary scholar Anna-Lisa Dieter, critical tones also deliberately sound. In many ways, “The Second Sex” is no longer up to date, it can be heard or read there, topics such as racism or homosexuality are blind spots for de Beauvoir, her arguments have been outdated since Judith Butler’s “The Discomfort of the Genders” at the latest. And what would Simone de Beauvoir have said about queer body designs, such as how Kim de l’Horizon lives them today and processes them in literature?

We won’t find out. Simone de Beauvoir’s work, as Iris Radisch has to remind you time and again, was created at a time when women were largely excluded from public life in France; Only in 1945 were they allowed to vote for the first time, they were actually subject to men in marriage or studies.

De Beauvoir made a decisive contribution to the fact that a lot has changed, also in Germany. “Women, you owe her everything!” the philosopher Elisabeth Badinter once said. However, Simone de Beauvoir herself already knew that everything is not enough in the long run: “No, we didn’t win this game,” she wrote in her memoirs in 1976. Now it’s the turn of the next generations. The game isn’t over yet.

Simone de Beauvoir & The Second Sex, exhibition, Literaturhaus, Salvatorplatz 1, daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Information, also on the large accompanying programme: literaturhaus-muenchen.de

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