Conversions of Repetition

Penelope Deutscher

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511490507.004

Chapter 3 - Conversions of Repetition

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009

Penelope Deutscher

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Penelope Deutscher: Affiliation:
Northwestern University, Illinois

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My freedom, in order to fulfill itself [pour s'accomplir], requires that it open into [déboucher] an open future: others open the future to me, it is they who, setting up the world of tomorrow, define my future; but if, instead of letting me participate in this constructive movement, they oblige me to expend [consumer] my transcendence in vain, if they keep me below the level which they have conquered and on the basis of which new conquests will be achieved, then they are cutting me off from the future, they are changing me into a thing. Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying, and human existence is indistinguishable from an absurd vegetation … Oppression divides the world into two clans: those who develop humanity [édifient l'humanité] by thrusting it ahead of itself and those who are condemned to mark time hopelessly [piétiner sans espoir] merely to support [pour entretenir] the collectivity; their life is a pure repetition of mechanical gestures.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. mod.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir
Ambiguity, Conversion, Resistance
, pp. 94 - 130

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490507.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2008

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