Papers by Judith G . Coffin
Sex, Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir, 2020
"What I wanted was to penetrate so deeply into the lives of others that when they heard my voice ... more "What I wanted was to penetrate so deeply into the lives of others that when they heard my voice they would have the impression they were speaking to themselves." Simone de Beauvoir. How did readers respond?
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Visions of History (Pantheon), 1983
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Interview de Judith Coffin | Voyages autour de mon cerveau https://vadmc.hypotheses.org/926 1/4 O... more Interview de Judith Coffin | Voyages autour de mon cerveau https://vadmc.hypotheses.org/926 1/4 OpenEdition Search Tout OpenEdition Voyages autour de mon cerveau Vol dans les hauteurs Pour l'amour des lettres-Interview de Judith Co n Judith Coffin est professeure et chercheuse à l'Université du Texas. Son ouvrage Sex, Love and Letters. Writing Simone de Beauvoir est paru en septembre 2020 chez Cornell University Press. Elle travaille également sur Ménie Grégoire et Françoise Giroud. Un grand merci à elle de nous avoir répondu directement en français. Tiphaine Martin-Comment êtes-vous venue à lire et à travailler sur Simone de Beauvoir, puis sur la correspondance de ses lecteurs et lectrices ? Judith Coffin-J'écrivais un compte-rendu de quelques ouvrages au sujet du Deuxième Sexe quand je suis tombée sur un article de Mauricette Berne, l'archiviste et conservatrice générale au département des Manuscrits à la Bibliothèque Nationale. L'article se trouvait dans le beau volume créé pour le cinquantenaire du Deuxième Sexe par Christine Delphy et Sylvie Chaperon (Paris, Syllepse, 2002). Dans ce recueil, Mauricette Berne parlait des lettres de Beauvoir et je suis donc moi-même allée les consulter. Il n'y avait qu'une centaine de lettres au moment de ma visite, la collection n'étant pas encore cataloguée. Mais j'ai été bouleversée par cette collection-pour reprendre le mot préféré des lectrices et lecteurs dans leurs lettres à Simone de Beauvoir. Quel déferlement d'émotion, de projections, d'identification, d'attentes, de déceptions et de passions !
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International Labor and Working-Class History, 1984
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The American Historical Review, 2010
The letters to Beauvoir offer rare close-up views of women and men in the 1950s struggling to wri... more The letters to Beauvoir offer rare close-up views of women and men in the 1950s struggling to write about a range of difficult subjects: work, the travails of a writer, marriages gone bad, unwanted pregnancies and unwanted children, frustrated or confusing desires and feelings, including homosexuality, childhood experiences, and so on. The letter writers' ability to broach these topics was often limited by ignorance or isolation, by their having no language that seemed appropriate, and indeed by a sense of themselves as ordinary. What unlocked their inhibitions and prompted them to write to a philosopher? The answer involves several elements. Beauvoir raised topics made timely by France's economic and cultural postwar transformation. More important, she invited readers to identify with her and engage her directly, through her memoirs and, though less directly, in The Second Sex—in a language that was at once shocking or disconcerting and also resonant.
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Cultural Critique, 2015
This essay situates French radio host Menie Grégoire's 1960s “radio-psy” program in the long hist... more This essay situates French radio host Menie Grégoire's 1960s “radio-psy” program in the long history of radio and psychoanalysis. It moves from Grégoire's program back to what I see as particularly interesting antecedents: modernist radio during the 1920s and 30s, in the first flush of artistic and intellectual enthusiasm for the new medium's communicative power. Paul Deharme and Robert Desnos, among others, drew from both inherited conceptions of the auditory and newer theories of consciousness and mind, especially psychoanalysis, with its compelling reinterpretation of interiority, intersubjectivity, and listening. Politics and war pushed such experiments off the air in the 1940s and 50s. But aspects of those experiments reemerged in the late 1960s. In a very different historical context of a “crisis of listening,” interwar ideas, including the relevance of psychoanalysis to radio practice, again made sense.
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French Politics, Culture, and Society, 2010
This essay considers the near simultaneity of The Second Sex and Alfred C. Kinsey's reports on se... more This essay considers the near simultaneity of The Second Sex and Alfred C. Kinsey's reports on sexual behavior. It shows how reviewers in both France and the United States paired the studies; it asks how that pairing shaped the reception of The Second Sex; and it situates the studies in their larger historical context—a moment in which sexuality commanded new and much broader attention. An ever-widening number of disciplines, institutions, sectors of mass culture, and representatives of an expanding consumer economy (from studies of the authoritarian personality or juvenile delinquency to advertising) insisted that sexuality was key to their concerns and enterprises. The ways in which sexuality might be understood multiplied—to the point where an all encompassing notion of "sex" collapsed, giving way, eventually, to a plurality of terms: sexuality, sex roles, and gender.
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Gender and Class in Modern Europe, edited by Laura L. Frader and Sonya O. Rose , 1996
When Marx wroteCapital, the sewing machine seemed to him a “decisively revolutionary machine,” de... more When Marx wroteCapital, the sewing machine seemed to him a “decisively revolutionary machine,” destined to overthrow existing social modes of production. That it promised to transform the role of women in industry helped to rivet many nineteenth-century observers’ attentions on this new technology. The sewing machine, however, was not only a means of production; it was one of the first mass-produced and mass-marketed consumer durables. Inextricably linked to a revolution in clothing production, it was also bound up with a revolution in consumption, a revolution that entailed the large-scale organization of retail, credit, and advertising, new patterns of spending, and more.
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French Politics, Culture, and Society, 2007
Reviewed Works: Deuxième sexe de Simone Beauvoir [sic]: Un Héritage admiré et contesté by Catheri... more Reviewed Works: Deuxième sexe de Simone Beauvoir [sic]: Un Héritage admiré et contesté by Catherine Rodgers; Le Deuxième Sexe, Le Livre Fondateur du féminisme moderne en situation by Simone de Beauvoir; Cinquantenaire du Deuxième sexe by ; Le Deuxième Sexe de Simone de Beauvoir: Textes réunis et présentés par Ingrid Galster by Ingrid Galster; Beauvoir and the Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism by Margaret A. Simons.
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The Voice of the Citizen Consumer Movements, and the Political Public Sphere, edited by Kerstin Bruckweh, 2011
Volume description:
Citizen consumers have two significant voices in the political public spher... more Volume description:
Citizen consumers have two significant voices in the political public sphere: one constructed by organized consumer movements, the other by opinion polls and market research. While the first can be powerful, surveyed citizen consumers remain a diffuse, powerless bulk. With comprehensive computer usage and other technical advances, the applications of survey techniques and the number of competing interests have risen. Some fear that the privacy of personal data is threatened, while others become heavily dependent on huge amounts of data to satisfy their clients. Political and economic marketing and surveying need to gather information about citizen consumers while also obeying data protection regulations. Thus knowledge, power, and agency are important in connecting consumption, consumers, citizens, market researchers, and the political. In examining these aspects, the volume brings together the history of the consumer and the history of politics in modern Europe. In particular, it focuses on two strands of research that are closely interconnected but have so far been treated in isolation: the politics of consumption and consumer organizations on the one hand, and the techniques of market research and opinion polling on the other. In concentrating on France, Britain, and Germany (and partly on the USA) this volume tells the story of the political sphere in Western consumer societies.
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Journal of Modern History, 1991
In France, as in most of the advanced industrial nations, the late nineteenth
century brought w... more In France, as in most of the advanced industrial nations, the late nineteenth
century brought with it a crisis about women's work. The subject could hardly
be called new, for the whole century was uniquely preoccupied with the
conditions, value, and repercussions of female wage labor. Yet the uproar of
the 1890s was, in important respects, unprecedented.
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H-France Review, 2010
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Book Reviews by Judith G . Coffin
H-France Review, 2016
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French Politics, Culture, and Society, 2014
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H-France, 2017
The cover photograph for Sarah Fishman's new book distills wonderfully one of her central issues:... more The cover photograph for Sarah Fishman's new book distills wonderfully one of her central issues: the bewildering contrast between the affluent sexiness of postwar consumer culture and the ordinary lives of many people. A poignantly frowsy-looking woman and her two children (or perhaps grandchildren) are looking at a sidewalk advertisement for Jessos lingerie. All three have their cloth coats buttoned to the neck. The advertisement is a larger-than-life-sized maquette of a model in her bra, underpants, and stockings, blonde curls falling over her shoulders and towel draped by her side. She is leaning forward and stepping into her dress. The little girl is captivated, looking straight at the model's thighs. Her brother, wide-eyed, tries to look ahead but lets a glance stray in the model's direction. The mother (or grandmother) hesitates; she may be on the verge of pulling her daughter away, but she is interested herself. No one is scandalized. But no one is quite sure, either, how the sexy, well-undressed blonde should fit into her or his world. Fishman brilliantly shows how women, men, and children contended with the disconcerting challenges of the postwar period, especially the changing expectations, moral codes, responsibilities, and permissions around gender and family life. Those changes were prompted by the economic transformations that were global as well as national, a political determination to modernize and rebuild after the war, rising affluence, a baby boom, and the popularization of certain currents of thought. (Freud, Beauvoir, and Kinsey is Fishman's shorthand for those currents-more on that in a moment.) The sweeping economic and cultural dimensions of the Trente Glorieuses have attracted attention for decades, and even a very long list of books would miss significant contributions, for the issues are theoretical as well as empirical. Fishman's originality lies in her focus on households of lower middle-class shopkeepers and employees, the urban or rural working classes, or, simply, the poor. The book is not abstractly demographic or sociological, however; it aims instead to capture voices, questions, dilemmas, and details of daily life. Fishman draws on an enormous number of articles, letters from readers, and comments from experts in the women's press. The so-called presse du coeur looms large: especially Confidences and Nous Deux, both of which were launched in the interwar period, closed down by Vichy, and took off again in the war's aftermath. Confidences: le journal des histoires vraies like its American counterpart trafficked in "true stories" and reached at least a million readers. Nous Deux specialized in romance, titillation, and lots of visuals-it was published by the Italian Cino del Duca, who also published Tarzan. Both spectacularized everyday life, and both made letters from and advice to readers a central feature. Such back-and-forth created the constant contact, chattiness, and complicity that Edgar Morin deemed constitutive of capitalist consumer culture.[1] Fishman also looks at Constellation, which offered "a French look at the world" and aimed to rival Reader's Digest in reporting on general interest stories, from politics and
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Radical History Review, 1982
On Alain Corbin, Les Filles de noce: Misère sexuelle et prostitution au 19e et 20e siècles (Paris... more On Alain Corbin, Les Filles de noce: Misère sexuelle et prostitution au 19e et 20e siècles (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1978).
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Papers by Judith G . Coffin
Citizen consumers have two significant voices in the political public sphere: one constructed by organized consumer movements, the other by opinion polls and market research. While the first can be powerful, surveyed citizen consumers remain a diffuse, powerless bulk. With comprehensive computer usage and other technical advances, the applications of survey techniques and the number of competing interests have risen. Some fear that the privacy of personal data is threatened, while others become heavily dependent on huge amounts of data to satisfy their clients. Political and economic marketing and surveying need to gather information about citizen consumers while also obeying data protection regulations. Thus knowledge, power, and agency are important in connecting consumption, consumers, citizens, market researchers, and the political. In examining these aspects, the volume brings together the history of the consumer and the history of politics in modern Europe. In particular, it focuses on two strands of research that are closely interconnected but have so far been treated in isolation: the politics of consumption and consumer organizations on the one hand, and the techniques of market research and opinion polling on the other. In concentrating on France, Britain, and Germany (and partly on the USA) this volume tells the story of the political sphere in Western consumer societies.
century brought with it a crisis about women's work. The subject could hardly
be called new, for the whole century was uniquely preoccupied with the
conditions, value, and repercussions of female wage labor. Yet the uproar of
the 1890s was, in important respects, unprecedented.
Book Reviews by Judith G . Coffin
Citizen consumers have two significant voices in the political public sphere: one constructed by organized consumer movements, the other by opinion polls and market research. While the first can be powerful, surveyed citizen consumers remain a diffuse, powerless bulk. With comprehensive computer usage and other technical advances, the applications of survey techniques and the number of competing interests have risen. Some fear that the privacy of personal data is threatened, while others become heavily dependent on huge amounts of data to satisfy their clients. Political and economic marketing and surveying need to gather information about citizen consumers while also obeying data protection regulations. Thus knowledge, power, and agency are important in connecting consumption, consumers, citizens, market researchers, and the political. In examining these aspects, the volume brings together the history of the consumer and the history of politics in modern Europe. In particular, it focuses on two strands of research that are closely interconnected but have so far been treated in isolation: the politics of consumption and consumer organizations on the one hand, and the techniques of market research and opinion polling on the other. In concentrating on France, Britain, and Germany (and partly on the USA) this volume tells the story of the political sphere in Western consumer societies.
century brought with it a crisis about women's work. The subject could hardly
be called new, for the whole century was uniquely preoccupied with the
conditions, value, and repercussions of female wage labor. Yet the uproar of
the 1890s was, in important respects, unprecedented.
The relationship between Beauvoir and her audience proved especially long, intimate, and vexed. Coffin traces this relationship, from the publication of Beauvoir's acclaimed The Second Sex to the release of the last volume of her memoirs, offering an unfamiliar perspective on one of the most magnetic and polarizing philosophers of the twentieth century. Along the way, we meet many of the greatest writers of her generation—Hannah Arendt; Dominique Aury, author of The Story of O; François Mauriac, winner of the Nobel Prize and nemesis of Camus; Betty Friedan; and, of course, Sartre—bringing the electrically charged salon experience to life.
Sex, Love, and Letters lays bare the private lives and political emotions of the letter writers and of Beauvoir herself. Her readers did not simply pen fan letters but, as Coffin shows, engaged in a dialogue that revealed intellectual and literary life to be a joint and collaborative production. "This must happen to you often, doesn't it?" wrote one. "That people write to you and tell you about their lives?"