Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophy, and Feminism

by Nancy Bauer

  To my ear, Beauvoir here paints a scene of woman’s body as the site of a life-and-death drama (something she at one point calls “the theater of a play that unfolds within her” [27]) in which she might well find herself invested (as when she hopes to become pregnant) but over which she has no control. Of course, all creatures could be described as prey to certain bodily processes over which they have no control (such as indigestion). But Beauvoir’s point is that what distinguishes women from men, what makes their bodily situation describable in general or by type in terms of a particular conception of alienation, is that they are routinely prey to “foreign powers,” routinely become sites of drama, strictly by virtue of being female. And it’s not that a woman could not in principle choose pregnancy, for example, as a project; it’s that this choice inevitably leads to a certain split in the self, between what Beauvoir calls her “individuality” and what she calls “the interests of the species.”6 Understanding women’s inherent tendency toward alienation is a key to understanding the role that biology plays in Beauvoir’s conception of women’s situation, of how women have come to be constrained by the fantasies that govern men’s Looks.7

  It’s important to note, however, that the alienation Beauvoir describes is not necessarily psychological or even existential/ phenomenological. Beauvoir is not, in other words, making some empirical claim about how women feel about themselves or specifically their bodies when they menstruate. If she were making such a claim, then the charge that she is a biological determinist might be warranted; for the implication would be that woman is bound to regard herself as alienated (in the sense Beauvoir is trying to articulate here) under any circumstances as long as her body is female. I read her instead as trying to make the point that women’s bodily alienation lends itself to exploitation under certain social circumstances, whereas men’s physiology (in and of itself) does not. Women’s physiology, in other words, makes her prone to suffer oppression. But of course this reading requires an explanation, which will emerge as we explore a second, markedly different use Beauvoir makes of the concept of alienation.

  This second use, introduced in the chapter on psychoanalysis, which follows the chapter on biology, appears in the form of what Beauvoir calls an “existential fact,” namely, “the tendency of the subject toward alienation” (47). She writes,

  The anguish of his liberty leads the subject to search for himself [se rechercher] in things, which is a way of fleeing from himself. This is a tendency so fundamental that immediately after weaning, when he or she is separated from the All, the child strives to seize in mirrors, in the look [le regard] of his parents, his alienated existence. (47, TM; LDS 1:90)

  Beauvoir herself glosses this idea at the very beginning of book 2 of The Second Sex, right after the first paragraph, the one that opens with “One is not born a woman”:

  The world is at first present to the newborn only in the form of immanent sensations. He is still immersed in the bosom of All [sein de Tout] as in the time he lived in the shadows of a womb. When he is raised to the breast or bottle, he is invested with the heat of maternal flesh. Little by little he learns to perceive objects as distinct from himself: he distinguishes himself from them. At the same time, in a more or less brutal fashion, he is detached from the nourishing body. Sometimes, he reacts to this separation by a violent crisis. In any case, it is toward the moment when it is consummated—toward the age of about six months—that he begins to manifest through acts of mimicry, which subsequently become genuine displays, the desire to seduce others. Certainly, this attitude is not defined by a reflective choice; but there is no need to intend [penser] a situation for it to exist. In an immediate manner the nursling lives the original drama of every existent, which is the drama of his relationship to the Other. It is in anguish that the human being feels his abandonment. Fleeing his liberty, his subjectivity, he would like to lose himself in the bosom of All: here is the origin of his cosmic and pantheistic dreams, of his desire to forget, to dream, to be ecstatic, to die. He never succeeds in abolishing his separate self [moi; also translatable as “ego”]. At the least he wishes to attain the solidity of the in-itself, to be petrified into a thing. It is particularly when he is fixed by the look of others that he appears to himself as a being. It is in this perspective that we must interpret the conduct of the child. In a carnal form, he discovers finitude, solitude, abandonment in a foreign world. He tries to compensate for this catastrophe by alienating his existence in an image whose reality and value others will ground. It appears that he begins to affirm his identity at the moment at which he recognizes his reflection in mirrors—a moment that coincides with that of weaning. [Here Beauvoir inserts a footnote citing a paper by Jacques Lacan.] His ego [moi] blends [se confonder] so well with this reflection that it is formed only in being alienated. Whether the mirror properly speaking plays a role more or less considerable, it is certain that the child begins around six months to mimic his parents and to grasp himself in their look as an object. He is already an autonomous subject who transcends himself toward the world: but it is only in alienated form that he will encounter himself. (268–269, TM; LDS 2:14–15)

  Here Beauvoir is claiming that an infant’s coming to perceive himself as individuated inevitably entails a certain resistance, which, she says, takes the form of a desire to become an in-itself, or object. For the baby, individuation is nothing less than a “catastrophe”: through it he “discovers finitude, solitude, abandonment in a foreign world.” This catastrophe is for the baby the meaning of his existential “liberty,” which Beauvoir indicates here is, or is the defining feature of, his subjectivity. In chapter 3 I said that like Hegel and Sartre, Beauvoir links the idea of subjectivity with the idea of freedom by defining a subject as a being who acts, where by definition for all three figures acting is something that goes beyond mere attempts at fulfilling one’s desires as one finds them; I noted that such desires might include those for food, shelter, sexual pleasure, and so forth. But in the long passage above what Beauvoir is emphasizing is something like the cost or condition of this freedom, which is a radical state of independence or separation from the world. Indeed, in this passage the baby’s first experience of freedom, epitomized by the image of being forcibly weaned from the mother’s breast, is marked by a sense not of exhilaration but of what Beauvoir calls “abandonment”—a realization that the world exists independently of you, of your perceptions, your needs, your desires. This interpretation implies that experiencing one’s existential freedom also consists in the recognition of oneself as desirous—as craving guaranteed connections with this independent world. It also provides the means to suggest that when in her earlier philosophical works Beauvoir talks about “assuming” freedom, what she means is keeping this recognition of one’s craving for secure connections with the the world in view, living with and against it, bearing up (whatever this turns out to look like) in the wake of a separation you acknowledge to be catastrophic.

  Notice also that Beauvoir suggests in the above passages that it’s perfectly natural, indeed “fundamental,” to attempt to avoid assuming one’s freedom by wishing to transform oneself into a thing, that is, something whose relationship to the world is reliably constant. This natural desire to divest oneself of one’s existential liberty is what she means by this second use of the term “alienation.” And notice that the naturalness of what Beauvoir (like Sartre) calls the “flight” from liberty need not be explained—is not explained by her here—in terms of cowardice, moral or psychological. Instead, she identifies it as a product of the fact that coming to see oneself as separate from the world is coincident with the discovery of oneself as an object in the eyes of others (and, as the case may be, in mirrors). In the last sentence of the long passage cited above, Beauvoir seems to be suggesting that coming to see oneself as individuated is the result or by-product of or perhaps even the form taken by coming to see oneself as (to use Sartre’s term) being-for-others, that is, as an object of other people’s regard. If
this is right, then there is something of a paradox or perhaps an ironic coincidence here: one discovers oneself in the other’s Look as the object one desires, only because of this discovery, to be. But Beauvoir appears to be suggesting that this particular desire, the desire to be reified by the other’s Look, is bound to be disappointed whenever the other’s gaze is turned or averted. Thus, the infant, “living the original drama of every existent,” seeks to seduce the other, to recapture herself or himself in the other’s Look. The infant learns to do this, at first, by mimicking his or her parents, who themselves are acting out their own dramas. And later, Beauvoir suggests, the infant may learn to look for himself elsewhere, in “his cosmic and pantheistic dreams, his desire to forget, to dream, to be ecstatic, to die.” Thus Beauvoir is in effect declaring some of the highest of human aspirations to originate in a universal drama of alienation. This is going to turn out to be important in her understanding of both men’s and women’s “situations.” One could say that the difference between the two is a difference in how this drama plays out: while men tend eventually to attempt to alienate themselves in Projects, to dream big dreams and risk dying for them (literally or spiritually), women are inclined never to stop attempting to reify themselves in the gaze of others.

  Before I explore Beauvoir’s explanations for this difference, I want to pause at least to acknowledge the resonances between the long passage from the opening of book 2 of The Second Sex cited above and key moments in the writing of the authors whose work Beauvoir is appropriating in this passage, in particular Hegel and Sartre. (Given the preoccupations of this project, I cannot pursue at any length the question of Beauvoir’s indebtedness at this juncture to Lacan. But should anyone doubt that his work figures heavily in Beauvoir’s understanding of alienation, he or she need only consult the (sole) footnote to Beauvoir’s long passage, in which she hails Lacan’s discovery of the so-called “mirror stage” of infancy, declaring it to be “of prime importance.”8) Beauvoir’s picture of the newborn learning to distinguish herself from objects recalls Hegel’s picture of the subjectively self-certain being, who also regards such objects solely in terms of their usefulness with regard to his own desire and their accessibility. For both Beauvoir’s infant and Hegel’s subjectively self-certain being, the discovery of the “other” bodes catastrophe, not the least striking feature of which is a massive change in self-conception (a moment Freud might identify as that at which the conditions sustaining primary narcissism are destroyed). But at this point Beauvoir and Hegel seem to part company. While Hegel portrays the subjectively self-certain being’s response to this catastrophe as an attempt to achieve objective self-certainty through the other’s “recognition” of himself as essentially “for-himself,” Beauvoir suggests that the infant, who, again, she says, is living the drama of every existent, responds to it by attempting to petrify herself in the other’s reflection, “to attain the solidity of the in-itself.”9

  Beauvoir’s depiction of the infant here recalls Sartre’s characters in No Exit, in which, I argued in chapter 4, it is the narcissistic wish for the Other to reflect back to you a fixed image you have of yourself that brings on the conditions of hell. But the difference here, as I read it, is that for Beauvoir this wish is the centerpiece of a necessary stage in the history of the human individual. What she seems to be suggesting is that individuation itself is driven by a human being’s demand to find a fixed reflection of himself or herself in another person’s regard, a regard human beings attempt to elicit by what Beauvoir calls seduction. The infant’s ego, she claims, “blends so well with this reflection that it is formed only in being alienated.” By denying that that the infant chooses to be alienated (“this attitude is not defined by a reflective choice”), Beauvoir suggests that the infant’s attempt to seduce the other does not count as a genuine act, a genuine expression, in other words, of the infant’s freedom. You might say that it is the crisis of recognizing oneself to be for-itself, in the Hegelian sense, that provokes the desire to be confirmed by the other to be fundamentally in-itself. This means that I’m arguing that Beauvoir in the passage I’m examining is doing something like turning Hegel—and Sartre—inside out. For both Hegel and Sartre, the presence of the “other”10 induces in a person the catastrophe of experiencing himself as in-itself, as a mere thing in someone else’s world. And a natural response to this crisis, on both their accounts, is the attempt to get the “other” to recognize you as essentially not a mere thing, as fundamentally “for-yourself.” But for Beauvoir, I’m claiming, the presence of the “other” reveals to me the fact of my own individuality, which I experience in the form of a sense of loss, of isolation. This catastrophe is the other face of what Sartre calls freedom. But the natural response to the crisis is not to exploit this freedom but to attempt to divest oneself of it by demanding of the other not that he or she confirm you as “for-itself” but as something with a stable connection to the world—as “in-itself.” This means that for Beauvoir, unlike for Hegel, the encounter with the “other” does not automatically lead to a demand for “recognition,” at least in Hegel’s sense. Rather, it leads to an attempt to seduce others into allowing you to alienate yourself in their gaze.

  This does not imply that Beauvoir rejects the idea that there is a stage in the drama she’s describing at which the demand for recognition in Hegel’s sense may and often does occur. But Beauvoir does not see the demand for recognition as natural, at least not in the context she’s exploring. Rather, she sees the attempt to alienate one’s freedom as the natural response to the encounter with (what the catastrophe of experiencing one’s separation from the world reveals to the infant, enacting the drama of every existent, to be) the “other.” At one point (shortly after the passage I’ve been looking at) she even claims that “carnal union creates a deeper alienation than any resignation under the gaze of others” (270), which suggests that alienation is not only a temptation that occurs in the wake of the crisis of individuation but is indeed the primary “situation” of each individual. Once again, the distinctiveness of Beauvoir’s appropriation of Hegel is to be explained, I wish to argue, by the specific project that motivates it: the attempt to explain the singular nature of women’s “situation.” It is this project that provokes Beauvoir to examine the mechanics, if you will, of the “becoming” of women (and of men). The long passage I’ve been focusing on represents the beginning of this project, in which Beauvoir is claiming (a) that the impulse to self-alienation is universal in the early stages of human development; (b) that given the magnitude of the catastrophe of discovering oneself to be an individual, human beings never fully recover to the point of totally divesting themselves of this temptation; and (c) that there is no difference in the way male and female infants experience this crisis.

  Beauvoir is quite explicit about this final point. She writes,

  There is no difference in the attitudes of girls and boys during the first three or four years. Both try to perpetuate the happy condition that preceded weaning. In both sexes one observes seduction and display [parade]: boys are as desirous as their sisters of pleasing adults, provoking smiles, making themselves admired. (269–270, TM; LDS 2:16)

  While both boys and girls succeed in their seduction of adults only intermittently (“In this world, uncertain and unpredictable as the universe of Kafka, one stumbles at every step,” says Beauvoir [270]), girls actually seem to be more privileged than boys are at this early-childhood stage. This, according to Beauvoir, is because of what culture—all cultures—demand of the little boy, namely, that he demonstrate his maleness by becoming independent of adults: “He will please them,” as Beauvoir wryly puts it, “by not appearing to seek to please them.”11 Meanwhile, the little girl is allowed and even encouraged to continue her seductive ploys: “She is dressed up in dresses soft as kisses; her tears and caprices are indulged; her hair is carefully styled; people are amused by her expressions and coquetry. Carnal contacts and obliging looks protect her against the ang
uish of solitude” (270, TM; LDS 2:17).

  However, Beauvoir argues, “if the boy seems at first to be less favored than his sisters, it is because there are grander designs on him” (271, TM; LDS 2:18). Specifically, boys are given to understand at a very early age that their difference from girls, if apparently putting them at a disadvantage as young children, will eventually work to their benefit: the path, it is implied, may be more difficult, but the payoffs will be greater. And the boy is also taught that the symbol or, as Beauvoir goes so far as to put it, the “incarnation” of this advantage is his penis. Beauvoir is again quite explicit here: the boy does not automatically regard his penis as a symbol of either virility or privilege; rather, “he experiences [pride in his penis] through the attitude of the group around him” (271, TM; LDS 2:18). This is true, Beauvoir argues, regardless of the valence, if you will, of this attitude: whether the adults raising the boy are aroused by his maleness or awed by it or “get a sense of revenge in coming upon it in the nursling in a very humble form” (271), they convey to the boy that the penis—something that belongs to no girl—is important. Evidently, according to Beauvoir, the adults who convey this message to the young boy are passing on to him what was taught to them in early childhood and reinforced as they grew into maturity. Here, a partial explanation for this phenomenon, for the singular valuation of the penis, emerges. Beauvoir claims that the penis is anatomically well suited for this purpose: “projecting free of the body, it seems like a little natural plaything, a kind of puppet” (271). And adults teach the boy that he can do things with his penis that little girls cannot do, e.g., urinate standing up. They teach him these things not (necessarily) because they believe that the penis is valuable in and of itself but (primarily) because they wish to salve his disappointment in the wake of what Beauvoir calls the “second weaning,” that is, the culture’s demand that the boy become independent of others.