Madeleine Banatvala

In light of four key republished, posthumous, and previously overlooked literary texts by French authors Simone de Beauvoir and Violette Leduc, this project re-evaluates these authors’ depictions of female friendship, identity and sexuality through a new critical lens: theorist Svetlana Boym’s concept the “off-modern”, providing an original intervention into Beauvoir-Leduc scholarship. The “off-modern” reconsiders writings about “unconventional” women’s relationships/subjectivity, less as “outlandish”, but rather offering up new ways of understanding how women experience their selfhoods. My critical re-examination of literary and philosophical intra-female bonds changes scholarly understanding of Beauvoir-Leduc, by showing the wider philosophical significance of writings previously considered personal and off-limits to scholars.