Simone de Beauvoir’s work on embodied agency will be explored. Less concerned with the disruptive potential of sensation and more concerned with how attending to, be/holding and lingering on sensation facilitates human agency, Beauvoir has the potential to make contributions in contemporary work on affect. In her novels, She came to Stay and Blood of Others, we witness the process by which embodied female protagonists discern and disentangle themselves from the dispersive and narcissistic tendencies of negative affect and begin to engage positive affect that fosters rich relations with others, and thereby contributes to their engagement in the world and their concrete freedom.
