The Search for Selfhood: An Existential Feminist Exploration of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half

Clicks: 7
ID: 334216
2026
Free PDF
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Emerging

Ranked #269 of 1,064 articles by views in Annals of Human and Social Sciences

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 1,064 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
The research is an existential feminist analysis of Brit Bennet’s Vanishing Half (2020). Stella’s racial passing through material things shows that fragmented identity and psychological alienation comes from self-denial, while Desiree accepting her past shows that one can exist authentically and retain moral integrity even when one fails to be deemed a failure by society. By applying Simone De Beauvoir’s existential feministic framework on the life of twin sisters, the study investigates how women negotiate the tension between facticity the social racial and gender limitations imposed at birth and transcendence, the act of consciously choosing one’s own existence by exploring different paths of the protagonists. Furthermore, the study extends this framework to secondary characters Jude and Reese, showing how body politics and gender transitioning further de-essentialize the binaries. This paper ultimately argues that the Bennett narrative displays the existentialist view that existence is defined through the acceptance of one’s identity.
Reference Key
imported_1793226752_6ae2780087e50 Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Muhammad Adnan, Saima Bashir
Are you one of these authors? Claim your profile
Journal Annals of Human and Social Sciences
Year 2026
DOI
10.35484/ahss.2026(7-II)08
URL
https://ojs.ahss.org.pk/journal/article/view/1205
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.