in Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modernité et engagement, Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modern and committedClaudine Monteil, Ed L’Harmattan ISBN 978-2-296-10025-1 

            I made a trip to China in 1979, shortly after Mao Zedong’s death and the end of the cultural revolution when the Chinese government was starting to open up to the western world.  Shortly after my return, I had had the occasion to discuss Beauvoir’s essay on China, La Longe Marche, with her. In my critique, I analyze her political, economic, and sociological perspectives on the Cultural Revolution, and include details of  the meeting she and Sartre had with Mao Zedong.             My essay includes analysis of the French diplomatic reports, from a geostrategic point of view, of the perceived motivation for the Chinese invitation of Beauvoir and Sartre at a time when France and China had not yet established diplomatic relations. 

I also provide details of my meetings with the Dutch movie director Joris Ivens, a friend of Chou En Laï, who filmed parts of the Long March, and his wife who I befriended in the student movement. I also pay tribute to Marceline Loridan-Ivens’s recollections on directing movies with Joris Ivens in China in the 1970’s, and her surprisingly revealing conversations with Chou-En-Laї about the French student movement.              The fact that three of my books on the lives and work of Beauvoir and Sartre have been quickly translated into Chinese, confirms the interest and reverence that Chinese intellectuals have for them.  Beauvoir’s intellectual commitment and political activism against the possible colonialism of China by the Western world provides new insights to a more nuanced understanding of  modern China.  

in Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modernité et engagement, Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modern and committedClaudine Monteil, Ed L’Harmattan ISBN 978-2-296-10025-1)             In the interest of raising young people’s consciousness about the dangers of fascism and Nazism, I relate how Simone de Beauvoir supported my intention to participate in a seminar the Italian journalist and former congresswoman Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi was organizing at the University of Paris VIII-Vincennes.  The title of the seminar was “Elements for an Analysis of Fascism.”  I had the privilege of becoming a close friend of Macciocchi and during the next few years we would see each other almost every day at the University or in Paris.  

            Bright and lively, the petite, blond Macciocchi often dazzled and baffled her audience with her wit and erudition.  As a 17 year-old, she joined the Italian resistance with a friend of her youth, the movie director Luchino Visconti, and carried a gun to fight Mussolini’s supporters.  She later joined the Italian Communist Party which was less doctrinaire in the Stalinist tradition than the other branches of the Party in Europe.             Macciocchi had primarily been a Communist congresswoman from the region of Napoli and had written a highly respected book on the terrible condition of her citizens.  One of her special interests was the exploitation of women who went blind because they were forced to work to saw in dark, stifling rooms. The essay entitled “Lettres de l’intérieur du part” (“Letters From the Interior of the Party”), was written to the  philosopher Louis Althusser and was published by Maspero in 1970. It had inspired my generation of students from the 1970’s.  

            Like a lot of political writing of the time, another of Macciocchi’s essays, About China, is criticized today because it was seen as too favourable to the cultural revolution. This, along with other essays was got Macciocchi into trouble with the Italian Communist party.              In 1974, the university Paris VIII-Vincennes was renowned for its exceptional intellectual vitality. I was eager to attend Macciocchi’s seminar in which she had critiqued films such as “The Jew Suss ,” produced under the Mussolini and Hitler regimes for fascist propaganda purposes.  She wanted to show young students born after World War II how fascist thinking and propaganda work.  These films were discussed almost frame by frame to clearly show the intellectual traps and psychological manipulation of fascism with the participation of historians and resistants.   

            For young feminists, this seminar was extremely important because fascism is linked to the worst form of patriarchy in society.               Macciocchi’s seminar provoked outrage and protests among the most prejudiced leftist male students. They insulted Maccicochi with both political and sexual  slurs, and threatened her physically.  This protest was so violent that I and several other feminist students sometimes had to protect her.  Beauvoir supported Macciocchi’s seminar and let her know how important she thought her teaching was.              I recall these attacks on Macciocchi’s seminar and Beauvoir’s support in vivid details.  Macciocchi’s seminar, attended by former resisters, anti-fascist philosophers and historians, was also attended by the Italian movie director Paolo Pasolini, her old friend and companion in the struggle against fascism. Pasolini was assassinated in November 1975  by a group of young  Italian fascists.  I was with Macciocchi when she learned of Pasolini’s murder, and was keenly aware of how traumatic his death was for her.  Her seminar was taking a tragic tool  which she and I never forgot. 

in Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modernité et engagement, Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modern and committed,

Claudine Monteil, Ed L’Harmattan ISBN 978-2-296-10025-1     

         I have spent these last two years rereading issues of the monthly literary review Les Temps Modernes (Modern Times) a journal published by Beauvoir and Sartre since 1945, which enabled its French audience to discover writers and human rights activists from all over the world.  In collaboration with Sartre, Beauvoir was the review’s primary its editor.  She and Sartre looked at the world from a global perspective at a time when people did not have the opportunity to travel as much as they do now.       

         Over the years that I knew Beauvoir, I had many conversations with her about fascism and totalitarianism. Because my generation was born after World War II, she considered it of outmost importance to educate us about the way nazism and fascism functioned, especially in the way that it manipulated people’s minds.  She  was especially concerned that future generations  might be better able to recognize, understand, and combat totalitarian movements.  

         It was from this perspective that she and Sartre decided to publish an illuminating report of Dr G. M. Gilbert, a professor of  psychology at Princeton University who interviewed the Nazi Commandant Hermann Göring while he was a prisoner of the Allies before and during the Nuremberg trial.           

        Dr. Gilbert analyses Göring’s character and psychology, his childhood fascination with  violence, and his views regarding Jews.  Most revealing was Göring’s behind the scenes recollection of dynamics between Hitler, Chamberlain and the French representative Daladier at the Munich conference in 1938.  The Munich accord as related by Göring to Dr Gilbert is in itself a lesson in history and diplomacy!  

       This article is reported in the first part of my essay “A Woman Engaged in the Struggle for Human Rights”.

in Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modernité et engagement,
Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modern and committed
Claudine Monteil,
Editions L’Harmattan ISBN 978-2-296-10025-1

   My research confirms that French government officials had been carefully following Beauvoir and Sartre’s activities on their trips abroad, when they gave lectures and met prominent citizens, officials, and heads of State. Beauvoir is described in a less critical tone than Sartre. Her meetings with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Cuba are carefully reported in a critical way.

   In the reports Beauvoir is referred to as “Miss de Simone de Beauvoir” even though she is not a very young woman a the time. In reality Beauvoir’s speeches on the conditions of women after World War II were not considered a subject worthy of attention.

  But in one of her lectures in the United States after the war, before the publication of The Second Sex, I quote the comments of a French Consul who was surprised and baffled by the fact that a woman philosopher could be so bright and was welcomed in such a warm way by her American audience. In this lecture she defines existentialist philosophy as a positive and optimistic way to look at the world—a concept readily accepted by her American audience.

  My essay presents quotes from diplomatic reports that are often ironic and unexpected.

60th anniversary of the publication of The Second Sex :My new essay: Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modernité et engagement,Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modern and committedClaudine Monteil,Ed L’Harmattan ISBN 978-2-296-10025-1 

  This fall we will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Second Sex, the germinal work of modern feminism written in 1949 by Simone de Beauvoir.  Because I was close to Beauvoir during the last sixteen years of her life and worked with her on key issues for women’s rights both in France and around the globe, I have written an essay, published today, to review her engagement in these issues, to evaluate the modern relevance of her published work, and to highlight the issues she fought for during her lifetime as a consummate feminist activist. 

   This essay, entitled Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, Modernité et engagement,( Simone de Simone de Beauvoir, modern and committed), (Ed L’Harmattan ISBN 978-2-296-10025-1), presents a political and literary analysis of her works and her life in the context of current geostrategy and globalization. My book presents new documents and details from government archives, primarily from the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (equivalent of the State Department in the US) which reported on the numerous trips and interactions of Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre with political activists internationally.  My research in these archives provides insight, perspective and analysis of Beauvoir and Sartre’s activism and support of revolutionary governments, especially Cuba and China, and offers surprising points of view, anecdotes and information that has not been available before. 

  I explore how Beauvoir’s primary concerns: denunciation of dictatorships and totalitarianism, torture, women’s oppression in many countries, the condition of the elderly and the availability of health care, are still as relevant in the 21st century as they were during her lifetime. Simone de Beauvoir was a human rights activist ahead of her time, and my research explains why her books are still widely translated, especially in developing countries where she remains very popular.  I also examine her philosophical and engagement with the work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault, with psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan on women’s issues, and her rivalry with French communist writers, in particular Elsa Triolet and Louis Aragon. Simone de Beauvoir is still the most modern writer on women’s issues and I argue that she should remain an inspiration to feminists in the 21st century.

       The main points of my essay can be accessed on my blog {http://www.claudinemonteil.com/blog/}.  If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to send me an email.