Teaching Subjectivity. Travelling Selves for Feminist ... - MailChimp

to change. Leaving the mothers out of their documentation, the authors Jesper
Dehn Møller and Aydin Soei come to underline the need of tracing connections
between domains that are normally conceived as separate, if anything is
to change in our society and in our families.
This is linked to what one may consider to be the point of writing and
even the responsibility of the writer. Toril Moi presented this theme at a seminar
celebrating Simone de Beauvoir at Oslo University in 2008. To Beauvoir,
Moi claimed, the task of literature was to make transparent what it is to be a
human being. To be able to know oneself, one has to narrate oneself. Life is
ambiguous in that the meaning must be conquered again and again. Literature
is a laboratory in which one explores how human beings live their lives.
The point of writing is, for Beauvoir, intimately linked with philosophy
and ethics. Linnel Secomb even reverses the order, describing Beauvoir as a
woman philosopher masquerading as a writer. 17 Rather than become a traditional
philosopher, Beauvoir developed her thinking by writing about her own
experiences. Kate and Edward Fullbrook characterise Beauvoir as a philosopher
of experience, who insists on the philosophical relevance of individual human
experience. 18 In Les Belles Images Beauvoir states that each human being’s concrete
existence is prior to universal regulations and rules. As any other approach
seems to lead to yet new rules and generalisations, Beauvoir chose to develop
her understanding of ethics implicitly in her novels and by means of incorporating
philosophy and daily life experiences. Linking ethics with experience in
her writing, and presenting and developing a new paradigm of ethical understanding,
Beauvoir has inspired me in my writing, research and teaching.
Implications for teaching
In my field, which is ethics, it is important to enable students to see and identify
ethical dilemmas and reflect critically on their own values, culture, myths, and
so forth. Above I have, by means of my own personal story, illustrated how
ethical and moral values influence the ways in which we act, write and relate
publicly as well as privately. In a certain sense we never leave home; it is therefore
necessary to reflect our own childhood in a broader historical and societal
perspective. My mother was not the only one to make her children love their
17
Linnel Secomb, “Beauvoir’s Minotrian Philosophy.” Hypatia, vol.14. no 4. (1999)
18
Edward and Kate Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir. A Critical Introduction. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998)
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