Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), Mary Daly (1928–2010) and Donna Haraway (1946–) are three prominent feminist theorists, all of whom assign an immense – yet often overlooked – importance to phenomena they themselves call myth (fr. mythe). By examining how these theorists conceptualize the nature and function of the various phenomena thus named, the present study offers new insights into their most influential works and overall feminist thought.

To conduct a productive analysis of Beauvoir’s, Daly’s and Haraway’s writings on myth it is necessary to situate these within a wider and hitherto unexplored context: one that encompasses large parts of the nebulous academic field known as mythology (i.e., the study of myth). This recontextualization, in turn, enables insights of a more general nature. One the one hand, it reveals how mythology has served a resource, from which Beauvoir, Daly and Haraway have drawn to articulate arguments and analyses of great significance for the historical development of feminist theory. On the other hand, it makes visible that the same feminist arguments and analyses at times challenge the very premises on which much modern mythology rests. Thus, this study sheds new light not only on the work of these individual theorists, but on the (entwined) histories of both feminist theory and mythology. By demonstrating the difference a feminist perspective on myth might make, it also helps clarify the value of feminist theory to mythology’s future.

In her feminist classic The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir refers to 'the myth of Woman' to denote images of womanhood that rest upon and reinforce beliefs in a static, feminine essence. This article aims to understand what makes this myth mythical. The author argues that Beauvoir employs the term 'myth' to establish a parallel between the way in which modern men relate to women and the worldview of so-called primitives - who she portrays as ruled by a specific, non-rational mode of thought. Beauvoir could thus be read as appropriating an early anthropological discourse on myth, the representatives of which linked myth to non-Western 'primitive' societies, while they depicted Western modernity as haunted by its own primitive-mythical past. However, when situated against this background, Beauvoir's writings on myth are also shown to challenge the very premises upon which this still influential anthropological discourse rest. Whereas the early anthropologists attributed the survival of 'primitive' elements in modernity to a defiance of rationality, Beauvoir's argument suggests that this is better explained by examining how such elements serve the interests of those allegedly rational individuals and groups in power - who she describes as having employed rationality to defend their mythical beliefs.

This article makes visible some of the premises that underlie Rosi Braidotti's use of (political) myth. Focusing on some well-known characteristics of postmodernity, as well as the development of a new philosophy of subjectivity, I account for the divergence between Simone de Beauvoir, who thought of myth as a severe hindrance to the subject-becoming of women, and postmodern feminists, such as Donna Haraway and Braidotti, who represent a more affirmative stance. Through pinning down both similarities and differences between Haraway and Braidotti, I demonstrate that postmodern feminists might still promote mythmaking for dissimilar reasons. I argue that Braidotti, in contrast to Haraway, approaches myth from a horizon partly shaped by an anti-rationalist or 'demonic' philosophical tradition, whose chief representative is Friedrich Nietzsche. By studying the argument delivered by the latter in defence of myth, I extract a conceptual distinction between the 'Apolline' and the 'Dionysiac' aspects of mythmaking, by which it becomes possible to further qualify Braidotti's philosophy of political myth.