An other engagement

Simone de Beauvoir and the ethical problem of the political

pp. 191-217

in: Geoffrey A. Baker, The aesthetics of clarity and confusion, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

Beauvoir's The Mandarins, a chronicle of the possibilities of intellectual and literary activism in the postwar period, develops a compromise between the aesthetic of clarity and that of confusion. Leaning alternately on realist description of actual issues and light formal innovation, Beauvoir's novel impoverishes the idea of direct engagement, articulating transformation instead as a shattering of the self not dissimilar to the dissolution of individuality visible in Nietzsche's aesthetic. Activism in The Mandarins inhabits the realm of the interpersonal—the ethical—rather than the narrowly political. The climactic ending of the novel, which most critics have bemoaned as defeatist, actually offers everyday engagement on behalf of others as a foundation for large-scale political change.