Ohne Ereignis: Zur Genealogie weiblicher Unterwerfung in Beauvoirs Das andere Geschlecht

Abstract In her groundbreaking work The Second Sex , Simone de Beauvoir develops a form of genealogical analysis of female subjugation that can be read in continuity with Friedrich Nietzsche’s genealogical critique. This paper focuses on the chapter History in the first volume of The Second Sex , in which Beauvoir traces the historical genesis of women’s subordination from prehistory to the modern age and across different civilizations, in order to show that the construction of woman as ‚the Other‘ is a continuously self-reproducing mechanism of male domination. Instead of seeking a static or ‚true‘ origin, the genealogical method understood as critical historiography and a method of demystification enables us to grasp complex phenomena of oppression, such as complicity with domination and subtle forms of heteronomy, while revealing possibilities of emancipation.