More than a feminist: ANTi-Historical reflections on Simone de Beauvoir

This article offers an account of the complexity of the 'subject of the past' Simone de Beauvoir, a thinker that struggles to spark the interest of organizational scholars. Our argument is that the neglect of de Beauvoir's by Organization Studies pertains to the manners in which modernist and postmodernist approaches to history account for and 'make' the past of those who are not anymore. The paper is divided into four parts. In the first part, we present an overview of ANTi-History, the amodern approach to history that informs our analysis. We then use the ANTi-Historical concepts of 'symmetry', 'relationalism', and 'multiplicity to surface different historical constructions of de Beauvoir', with the objective to trace how these accounts have emerged, how they have assumed specific configurations, and how these configurations have changed over time enacting different social and political tactics. In the third part, we illustrate how these historical performances of de Beauvoir's have affected her reception by the field of Organizational Studies. In the fourth part, we explain what we believe our field can learn from a multiple and relational approach to the construction of accounts of subjects of the past and flesh out the potential of de Beauvoir's contribution.