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In Introduction: A Venerable Ancestor? Re-Reading Simone de Beauvoir, Sonia Krucks (Oberlin Coll, Ohio) briefly recaptures the environment surrounding the reception of Simone de Beauvoir's famous feminist work, The Second Sex (Parshley, H. M. [Tr], New York: Random House, 1974 [1949]). The basic philosophical presuppositions that undermine the book today -- the overthrow of the Sartrean problematic & postmodern feminist rhetorics -- are noted, & the symposium question is posed: does de Beauvoir enter into contemporary feminist theory or is she only an ancestor? In Encountering Simone de Beauvoir, Hester Eisenstein (State U of New York, Buffalo) suggests that de Beauvoir provides a groundbreaking discussion of the personal as the political, individual & political agency, & the historically specific nature of the feminist enterprise. She also raises questions about the limits of feminist unity as a vehicle for social change, suggesting that women need to articulate & defend their own interests & engage with the dominant power structure rather than create separate worlds. In On Re-Reading The Second Sex: Thoughts on Contingency and Responsibility, Sondra Faranganis (New School for Social Research, New York, NY) argues that de Beauvoir's discussion of the social construction of the self still allows space for individual freedom & responsibility. A Beauvoirian approach is applied to three recent legal cases concerning these issues. In "I Am a Woman:" Female Voice and Ambiguity in The Second Sex, Linda Zerilli (Rutgers U, New Brunswick, NJ) argues that contemporary feminists can benefit from de Beauvoir's focus on language & authorial voice & their relation to feminist writing for her particular rhetoric is a deliberate attempt to address the discursive properties of women. In Beauvoir and the New Criticism: Humanist Premises, Postmodernist Assaults, Mary Caputi (Colby Coll, Waterville, Me) describes de Beauvoir's relation to postmodern French feminism & psychoanalytic theory, paying particular attention to the political dimensions of psychoanalysis. It is suggested that the political goals of feminist writing & of de Beauvoir's political agenda locate social change in different realms, but both must be accommodated. 123 References. L. Baker