Identity without selfhood : Simone de Beauvoir and bisexuality

M. Fraser

Situated at the crossroads of feminism, queer theory, and poststructuralist debates around identity, this is not a book about Simone de Beauvoir, but, rather, a book that addresses the different ways in which she is constructed as an intelligible "self" by academics, biographers and the media. It shows how key Western concepts as individuality constrain attempts to deconstruct the self and prevent bisexuality being understood as an identity. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari to see what this construction of bisexuality offers contemporary theories, it also critiques Foucault's work.