Giv­en how many aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy depart­ments have ban­ished Exis­ten­tial­ism into some prim­i­tive wilder­ness, it seems strik­ing to hear peo­ple talk about it as a cur­rent phe­nom­e­non with a seri­ous, liv­ing pedi­gree and a hip youth van­guard dis­till­ing its ideas into pop cul­ture. By the time I’d heard of Albert Camus—by way of The Cure’s ear­ly sin­gle “Killing an Arab”—the ref­er­ences to the French philoso­pher and his nov­el The Stranger were already exot­ic, and as kitschy as the faux-Mid­dle East­ern gui­tar line in the song. But in 1959, the hip­ster exis­ten­tial­ist was a phe­nom­e­non so wide­spread that Nor­man Mail­er wrote a scathing essay about the char­ac­ter.

And a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist, sit­ting down to inter­view Exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher Simone de Beau­voir, began by ask­ing her to com­ment on the “group of noisy, row­dy jazz-lov­ing young peo­ple, in the imme­di­ate post-war peri­od.” This first wave of 50s Parisian hip­sters embraced Sartre, Camus, and Beau­voir right along with Coltrane and Char­lie Park­er.

Beau­voir dis­miss­es any con­nec­tion between her kind of Exis­ten­tial­ism and that of the row­dy mass­es except that of phys­i­cal prox­im­i­ty. Nonethe­less, like 90s fem­i­nist punk rock­ers who spread the ideas of third wave fem­i­nism, the French and Amer­i­can Beats made Exis­ten­tial­ist phi­los­o­phy cool.

Beau­voir prefers to draw a clear bound­ary between her work and the next generation’s appro­pri­a­tion. By this time, both Sartre and Camus had dis­avowed the term Exis­ten­tial­ist and had a falling-out over Com­mu­nism. But Beau­voir uses the term and refers to a “We,” who “think—and it’s one of the most impor­tant points in existentialism—that man is the pur­pose of man, his own future, and the pur­pose of all his activ­i­ties.” She draws on stark bina­ry oppo­si­tions of “good” and “evil” to explain the “fun­da­men­tal basis of what you could call our ethics,” and yet, she says, “we don’t ask meta­phys­i­cal ques­tions.”

If it sounds like Beau­voir is sum­ma­riz­ing Sartre, that’s part of what’s going on. The inter­view­er keeps press­ing to under­stand the “exis­ten­tial­ist man’s con­cep­tion of the world.” She oblig­es, dis­cussing “Sartre­an Exis­ten­tial­ism” and his major work Being and Noth­ing­ness and enter­tain­ing vague ques­tions about athe­ism and pol­i­tics. Final­ly, around 12:15, they begin to talk about the book for which de Beau­voir is best known, The Sec­ond Sex, which would go on to inspire 60s fem­i­nists like Bet­ty Friedan, Glo­ria Steinem, and UK col­lec­tivist mag­a­zine Spare Rib.

Calm and mea­sured through­out the con­ver­sa­tion, Beau­voir defends her ideas, includ­ing the most provoca­tive, that, as the inter­view­er para­phras­es, “You don’t believe in the exis­tence of a fem­i­nine nature. You believe peo­ple are first human, before being male or female.” She makes it clear right away that her anti-gen­der essen­tial­ism has roots in an even more fun­da­men­tal, and very Exis­ten­tial­ist, skep­ti­cism: “I don’t believe in the exis­tence of a human nature.” All of us, what­ev­er gen­der we’re taught to iden­ti­fy with, become prod­ucts of our “place, time, civil­i­sa­tion, and tech­nique etc.” through cul­tur­al con­di­tion­ing, not inner neces­si­ty.

The Sec­ond Sex, she says, is not a revolt or a protest, but a descrip­tion of an oppres­sive set of rela­tions that “cur­rent­ly nei­ther men nor women can just trans­form… with a mag­ic wand.” Nev­er­the­less, de Beau­voir became increas­ing­ly activist as she aged, giv­ing the elo­quent inter­view on “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in 1975. And above all, the younger gen­er­a­tion who picked up piece­meal Sartre also picked up enough of Beauvoir’s work to begin forc­ing changes in the mate­r­i­al con­di­tions she iden­ti­fied as cre­at­ing gen­der-based forms of social oppres­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simone de Beau­voir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intel­lec­tu­al and Fem­i­nist (1960)

Down­load All 239 Issues of Land­mark UK Fem­i­nist Mag­a­zine Spare Rib Free Online

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Punk rock and its accoutrements—including the hand­made, Xerox­ed ‘zine—pass into his­to­ry, replaced by Tay­lor Swift and Snapchat, or what­ev­er. But as a piece of his­to­ry, the ‘zine will always stand as a mark­er of a par­tic­u­lar era, of the 80s/early 90s explo­sion of crit­i­cal con­scious­ness fos­tered by young kids read­ing Niet­zsche, Fou­cault, and Camus, then form­ing their own bands, labels, and net­works. Cru­cial to the peri­od is the emer­gence of Riot Grrrl bands like Biki­ni Kill and their assault on oppres­sive gen­der pol­i­tics, in punk rock and every­where else. And cru­cial to many such punks’ under­stand­ing of gen­der was the work of crit­i­cal the­o­rist Judith But­ler.

“Riot Grrrl didn’t her­ald the begin­nings of third wave fem­i­nism,” writes Sophia Satchell Baeza in Can­vas, “we’ll give that to the emer­gence of post-struc­tural­ist Queer the­o­ry, and the work of Judith Butler—but it did help define it aes­thet­i­cal­ly as much as for­mal­ly for a new gen­er­a­tion of indig­nant fem­i­nists.” An essen­tial part of that aesthetic—the ‘zine—spread the tenets of Riot Grrrl anger, deter­mi­na­tion, and irony to cities far and wide. And, in 1993, a group of intel­lec­tu­al scen­esters cre­at­ed the ulti­mate punk homage to Butler’s unde­ni­able influ­ence: Judy!, an hon­est-to-good­ness Judith But­ler fanzine, com­plete with murky, mimeo­graphed pho­to spreads and ser­i­al killer type­script. (See the cov­er at the top, with pho­to of Judy Gar­land.) “Let’s talk about that real glam­our gal of the­o­ry, Judy But­ler,” begins one free-form intro­duc­to­ry essay.

She’s espe­cial­ly good to see live, if you can. Her per­for­mances are rife with wit­ty repar­tee about her mom or what­ev­er and the three times I’ve seen her, she’s been sport­ing lit­tle tai­lored black jack­ets. She’s a bit Gap but she’s still a fox.

This cav­a­lier hip­ster tone hides the voice of a like­ly grad stu­dent, who men­tions M.L.A. (the Mod­ern Lan­guage Association’s con­fer­ence), and oth­er post-struc­tural­ist the­o­rists like Gay­a­tri Spi­vak, Eve Sedg­wick, and Julia Kris­te­va. There are foot­notes and ref­er­ences to Butler’s clas­sic Gen­der Trou­ble amidst much more irrev­er­ent, cat­ty rhetoric like “Judy is the num­ber one dom­i­na­tor, and the only thing you or I can do is sub­mit glad­ly.” It’s great fun, if that’s what you’re into—and if you get the com­bo of ‘zine aes­thet­ic and aca­d­e­m­ic fem­i­nist the­o­ry. There’s even a quiz to test your knowl­edge of the lat­ter’s high priest­ess pro­fes­sors and inscrutable argot: “are you a the­o­ry-fetishiz­ing bis­cuit­head?”

As much as it know­ing­ly pokes fun at itself, in both form and con­tent the arti­fact rep­re­sents a per­fect hybridiza­tion of street­wise mid-nineties punk rock and chal­leng­ing mid-nineties high fem­i­nist the­o­ry. Cen­tral to the lat­ter, Judith But­ler chal­lenges cul­tur­al norms in ways that very much inform our pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty today. And ‘zine cul­ture, though it may appear most­ly in muse­ums and ret­ro­spec­tives these days, lives on in spir­it in the work of hip, cul­tur­al mavens like Rook­ie’s Tavi Gevin­son. Above, see But­ler dis­cuss her the­o­ry of gen­der per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty. And Read the entire issue of Judy!, the fanzine, here.

via Pro­gres­sive Geo­gra­phies

Read Chez Fou­cault, the 1978 Fanzine That Intro­duced Stu­dents to the Rad­i­cal French Philoso­pher

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.