From Judith Butler to Ranjana Khanna: looking back onto Simone de Beauvoir

The crucial importance of Simone de Beauvoir's theoretical approach to the question of 'femininity' over the last decades, has been well expressed by Judith Butler's distinction between 'sex' and 'gender'. Yet, de Beauvoir's thinking needs to be fully contextualized in the anti-colonial readings offered by her intellectual environment, as theorist Ranjana Khanna has recently shown in her latest works, where she links psychoanalysis to colonialism.