Kruks, Sonia. "Reading Beauvoir with and against Foucault."

Kruks, Sonia. "Reading Beauvoir with and against Foucault." Simone De Beauvoir's Political Thinking. Eds. Lori Jo Marso and Patricia Moynagh. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

This essay is selected as a chapter in an anthology on Simone de Beauvoir’s life and work that aims to, as the editors claim, “develop a radical approach to political thinking.” In her chapter, Sonia Kruks reads Foucault both “through and against” Beauvoir in order to address some of the difficulties for feminism in “appropriating Foucault too fully or too uncritically.” By pointing out both the divergences and complementarities between Foucault and Beauvoir, Kruks argues that the views of the two thinkers should not be positioned as antithetical, oppositional, or as advocating respectively “Enlightenment” and “post-Enlightenment,” which is itself a problematic dichotomist construction. Specifically, Kruks focuses on Foucault’s account of “subjectified subject,” in comparison with Beauvoir’s account of “becoming woman.” Taking the Foucauldian idea of panopticism as a focal point, Kruks argues that Beauvoir offers a more complete explanation of how the process of subjection works and how it can be challenged because of her account on issues such as gaze (objectifying and/or reciprocal), the institutional dimensions of masculine power, emotions, shame and self-surveillance and self-discipline, as well as ethical issues, which Foucault has insufficiently addressed. Reintroducing the notions of “personal agency” and “moral accountability” to Foucault’s theory through the reading of Beauvoir, Kruks offers a possibility to safeguard feminism as an indeterminate political project from complying with power.

Kruks' argument somewhat resonates with Butler's Hegelian approach to Foucault. Although, Kruks also touches panopticism, which I think is an essential idea when we talk about power and control in the Western context.