1949: In
Le deuxième sexe (second sex), Simone
De Beauvoir
discussed the social theory of
human identity at the time, with special reference to what it is
to be a "woman"
She focuses on the power of
marxism and
psychoanalysis to explain the issues, on the implications
of these two perspectives, and on their deficiencies
De Deauvoir drew on early
work of the psychoanalalyst Jacques
Lacan (1901-1981) about the formation of a
"mirror image" of
self.
In a mirror you meet yourself as an other person might see you.
|
|
Determination and self-determination
De Beauvoir says:
"No biological, psychological, or economic fate
determines the
figure that the human female presents in society; it is civilisation as a
whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and
eunuch,
which is described as feminine."
Biology, psychology (psychoanalysis), economics (marxism) on their own
are inadequate to explain identity.
Two other dimensions are necessary:
the
self determining
action of the individual who
"presents" him or herself
and the influence of
society
(civilisation)
De Beauvoir's
existential perspective is one:
in which a human being grasps
(understands, takes hold of) issues in the total perspective of his or
her existence.
Developing De Beauvoir
De Beauvoir's critique of sociology at mid-century has
been developed in the later part of the century by
Shulamith
Firestone and
Judith Butler.
19th century socialist feminism
|
Society intervenes in relations between the sexes through the institution
of
marriage. In Engels' day marriage involved a woman giving up
many freedoms that she retains today.
Engels continues:
"It can do this since it does away with private
property and
educates children on a communal basis, and in this way
removes
the two bases of
traditional marriage, the dependence rooted in private
property, of the woman on the man and of the children on the
parents."
Socialism and women's emancipation through collective education
|
The picture shows the South London Rational School meeting
in the Large Theatre of the Rotunda in the 1840s
(source)
|
not
communal sex:
We will understand more about the way communal education, alongside the
abolition of child labour, were to liberate women and children when we
consider
Owenism and socialist feminism, and consider the work of
children and women in the coal mines.
However, Engels draws our attention to a scandalous attack on socialists
(communists) that suggests their object is group sex:
"And
here is the answer to the outcry of the highly moral philistines
against
the
"community of women".
The third stage of a Rake's progress
"Community of women is a condition which
belongs
entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete
expression
in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and
falls
with it."
"Thus communist society, instead of introducing community of
women,
in fact abolishes it."
Owenism
[In speaking of communal provision Engels draws on
Owenite theory.
See the
community plan illustrating
Owen's 1817 proposal
Owen envisaged the un-
employed being provided with employment in villages of co-operation which
would be laid out in the manner suggested by the following diagram:
One advantage that the socialists perceived in communal facilities for
eating, cleaning, child-care, education, entertainment and production was
that it could free women from dependence on men and allow inter-personal
relations being self-determining.
Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto 1848
"The bourgeois claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed
co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more,
by the action of modern industry, all family ties among the proletarians
are torn asunder and their children transformed into simple articles of
commerce and instruments of labour.
Young woman working in an
1840s coal mine
"The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears
that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and,
naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being
common to all will likewise fall to the women.
"He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away
with
the status of women as mere instruments of production.
1917: Communist Revolution in Russia
1949: De Beauvoir
A world where men and women would be equal is easy to visualize, for
that precisely is what the Soviet Revolution promised: women raised
and
trained exactly like men were to work under the same conditions and for the
same wages.
|
Erotic liberty was to be recognized by custom, but the sexual
act was not to be considered a "service" to be paid for; woman was to be
obliged to provide herself with other ways of earning a living;
marriage
was to be based on a free agreement that the spouses could break at will;
|
maternity was to be voluntary, which meant that contraception and abortion
were to be authorized and that, on the other hand, all mothers and their
children were to have exactly the same rights, in or out of marriage;
pregnancy leaves were to be paid for by the State, which would assume
charge of the children, signifying not that they would be taken away from
their parents, but that they would not be abandoned to them.
|
|
But is it enough to change laws, institutions, customs, public
opinion, and the whole social context, for men and women to become truly
equal?
...
We must not believe, certainly, that a change in woman's economic
condition alone is enough to transform her, though this factor has been and
remains the basic factor in her evolution; but until it has brought about
the moral, social, cultural, and other consequences that it promises and
requires, the
new woman cannot appear.
At this moment they have been
realized nowhere, in Russia no more than in France or the United States;
and this explains why the woman of today is torn between the past and the
future.
...
But if we imagine ... a society in which the equality of the sexes would be
concretely realized, this equality would find new expression in each
individual.
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939
|
|
In
Interpretation of
Dreams (1900), Sigmund
Freud interpreted the
symbolism of dreams in a way that he presented as a scientific
exploration
of the unconscious mind. In
Beautiful Baby Laura Leland explains this.
|
De Beauvoir on Freud:
"it is civilisation as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate
between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine"
Eunuch: A
castrated man
|
|
Freud maintains that
"Sexual life
does not begin only at puberty, but starts with plain
manifestations soon
after birth." (Freud 1938 par.3.2).
|
But childhood sexuality is not like adult sexuality.
It is not about desiring intercourse.
[The picture is of a carving from a Hindu temple
Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh (Between
950 and 1150AD)
It is about desire.
|
Oral (mouth) and anal (bottom) phases of childhood sexuality
|
Babies obtain pleasure from sucking at the mother's breast. This is the
first phase of infant sexuality
The second phase is the anal phase, which Freud calls the sadistic-anal
phase. He says that the sadistic impulses that have occurred with the
appearance of the teeth develop,
|
|
"because satisfaction is then sought in aggression and in the excretory
function."
(Freud 1938 par.3.5).
Phallic phase of childhood sexuality
The third phase is the phallic phase
A phallus is an image of an erect penis that used to be carried in solemn
procession in the
Dionysian festivals in ancient Greece.
The phallic phase of childhood sexuality is pre-occupied with images of the
little boy's wee-wee and its absence in the little girl.
Freud thinks that
this is
"a forerunner of the final form taken by sexual life"
(Freud 1938 par.3.6).
|
|
Celebration of the erect penis in drunken revels in ancient Greece.
After such a drunken revelry we forget what happened (amnesia).
Latency
Freud
thought that after the phallic phase children fell victim to
what he called
`infantile amnesia', repressing all but a few memories of
their early
sexual life.
|
|
A theory of the
mind
Freud
divided the structure of the mind into three parts, which he
calls the id,
the ego and the super-ego.
The
id is the part of the personality that
"contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth ... the
instincts"
(Freud 1938 par.1.3).
Laura Leland writes: "The demands of the id are almost primitive in their
simplicity ... a newborn baby ... only wants to feel warm and well fed. He
wants to be comforted and satisfied by his mother's breast, with the
pleasurable ... feelings ... this brings.
|
|
The baby wants all this satisfaction
immediately and cries until he gets it... The id demands
instant gratification."
The
ego
The baby eventually works out that gratification is not always
immediate
and when this happens the ego comes into being. The ego
"acts as an intermediary between the id and the external world"
(Freud 1938 par.1.4).
It is a development of the id that stops the urges that might hurt it (like
taking hold of something hot). It allows the id to seek pleasure whilst
avoiding pain. The ego is governed by the `reality principle'.
The
super-ego develops as a result of the child going through
the
Oedipus complex
Picture source
|
Freud used a
Greek mythological story of Oedipus to illustrate his ideas
of the `love triangle' that exists in early childhood.
In this story Oedipus puts out his own eyes in pangs of guilt at having
inadvertently killed his father and married his own mother. The blinding
reminds us that all this activity is blocked out of our memory.
According to Freud,
the boy child is so in love with his mother that he becomes jealous of his
father. This brings him into conflict with his father; his urge is to kill
him and take his place.
|
Boy's castration complex
During the
phallic phase, boys become aware that
they possess a penis. When they realise that touching it feels good, they
"manipulate it frequently"
and then find out that
"adults do not approve of this behaviour."
(Freud 1924 par.5)
Freud connects childhood masturbation to an expression of mother love.
Symbolically, possibility that his father will dismember him represents a
love conflict with his father of possession of his mother. Because he has a
"narcissistic interest in that part of his
body ... the child's ego turns away from the Oedipus complex."
(Freud 1924 par.8)
Internalising
civilisation
The unconscious resolution of the conflict with his father
results in the
development of the super-ego. It is the result of the child
internalising
the parental authority figure, in this case the father, as
part of himself.
daddy's girlfriend
In his
essay
The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex (Freud 1924),
Freud writes that girls too, develop an Oedipus complex, though it is of a
much simpler variety than that which boys experience. He writes that
"it seldom goes beyond the taking of her mother's place and the adopting of
a feminine attitude towards her father."
(Freud 1924 par.13)
Freud maintains that a girl's Oedipus
complex
"culminates in a desire ... to receive a baby from her father as a gift -
to bear him a child."
(Freud 1924 par.13)
Freud writes that the wish to possess a penis and the wish to bear a child
"remain strongly cathected in the unconscious and help to prepare the
female creature for her later sexual role."
(Freud 1924 par.13)
Girl's castration complex
When
comparing her genitals to those of her brother, a little girl thinks that
she has been badly done by and feels inferior to him. She assumes that she
once possessed a penis and then `lost it by castration'. Freud says that
this is an essential difference between the sexes, because
"the girl accepts castration as an accomplished fact, whereas the boy fears
the possibility of its occurrence."
(Freud 1924 par.12b)
De Beauvoir:
If the little girl were brought up from the first with the same
demands and rewards, the same severity and the same freedom, as her
brothers, taking part in the same studies, the same games, promised the
same future, surrounded with women and men who seemed to her undoubted
equals, the meanings of the
castration complex and of the
Oedipus complex
would be profoundly modified.
Assuming on the same basis as the father the
material and moral responsibility of the couple, the mother would enjoy the
same lasting prestige; the child would perceive around her an androgynous
world and not a masculine world.
|
Androgyny is both man and woman
andro (man)
gyny (woman)
|
Were she emotionally more attracted to her
father - which is not even sure - her love for him would be tinged with a
will to emulation and not a feeling of powerlessness; she would not be
oriented toward passivity.
Authorized to test her powers in work and
sports, competing actively with the boys, she would not find the absence of
the penis - compensated by the promise of a child - enough to give rise to
an inferiority complex;
correlatively, the boy would not have a superiority
complex if it were not instilled into him and if he looked up to women with
as much respect as to men.
The little girl would not seek sterile
compensation in narcissism and dreaming, she would not take her fate for
granted; she would be interested in what she was doing, she would throw
herself without reserve into undertakings.
Jacques Lacan
1936 First presentation of the theory of the "mirror stage" at the
International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) conference at Marienbad
1949
De Beauvoir on
Lacan's mirror stage theory.
The child
"is separated more or
less brutally from the nourishing body.... the separation is accomplished,
toward the
age of six months... in carnal form he discovers finiteness, solitude,
forlorn desertion in a strange world.
"He endeavours to compensate for this
catastrophe by projecting his existence into an image, the reality and
value of which others will establish.
|
"It appears that he may begin to
affirm
his identity at the time when he recognizes his reflection in a mirror -
a time that coincides with that of weaning... his ego becomes so fully
identified with this reflected image that it is
formed only in being projected.
"Whether or not the mirror actually plays a
more or less considerable part, it is certain that the child commences
toward the
age of six months to mimic his parents, and under their gaze to regard
himself as an object.
|
"He is already an autonomous subject, in
transcendence toward the outer world; but he encounters himself only
in a projected form."
Engels 1884
Towards the end of his life, Marx became interested in the
anthropological reports of
Lewis Henry Morgan
(1818-1881). Morgan
argued that human society has three inter-related spheres:
production,
reproduction (i.e. the family and child rearing) and
government.
Something
happening in one sphere would have repercussions for something
happening in
another.
When Marx died, Engels inherited his manuscripts, including
his
notes on Morgan. Engels developed Marx's notes on historical
materialism
and the family into a book
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State
in
1884.
De Beauvoir
In 1949 Simone De Beauvoir started
The Second Sex
by analysing
biological, psychoanalytic (Freudian) and historical
materialist (Engels)
perspectives on women, and argues that they are partial.
From her existentialist view, biology, sex and economics cannot
determine a woman's destiny
"In our attempt to discover woman we shall not reject
certain contributions of biology, of psychoanalysis, and of
historical
materialism;
but we shall hold that the body, the sexual life,
and the
resources of technology exist concretely for [a human being]
only in so far
as he [or she] grasps them in the total perspective of his [or
her]
existence."
An existential perspective is one in which a human being grasps
(understands, takes hold of) issues in the total perspective of his [or
her] existence.
Shulamith
Firestone
Judith Butler in 2008
|
Judith Butler
Simone De Beauvoir argues that we explore the world in different bodies,
but
the natural differences do not mean that our worlds are very different -
society builds difference around relatively insignificant biological
differences
Judith Butler does not dispute any of that, but she asks to what extent
our bodies are natural?
Butler argues that
"there is no recourse to a
body that has not always already
been interpreted by
cultural meanings; hence, sex could not qualify as a
pre
discursive anatomical facticity. Indeed,
sex, by definition, will be
shown to have been
gender all
along". (Butler,
1990 p.8).
Bodies are performative:
|
"I pronounce you different bodies"
says society
|
Language is performative if the saying of something does the deed. If the
authorised person says "I pronounce you man and wife" in the right
circumstances, the two people it is said to become man and wife
Performativity is a pronouncement of what we will perform. Society does
the pronouncing
Judith Butler asks:
"Is there a way to link the question of the
materiality of the
body to the
performativity
of
gender? And how does the category of
"sex" figure within
such a relationship?"
|
A photograph
|
The
materiality of the
body
1951 - published 2008
au naturel
to the natural (nature)
in a natural state : without anything added
We are born naked, but this picture of Simone De Beauvoir naked was
considered scandalous.
Is this a body as nature gives it? Or is it a body seen through the eyes of
society (culture)? Is it shaped by society?
|
Is this a presentation?
Is this a performance?
Is this
performativity (a role that society
prescribes)?
Think about this quotation:
"No male philosopher I can think of would have had such a
lovely bottom. Mme de Beauvoir had a brilliant mind. She also had a
wonderful body. Women win on both counts." (Florence Montreynaud
2008)
This divides bodies (not minds) "naturally" into male and female.
Sociologists often argue that the natural difference between male and
female should be called sex and the cultural difference should be
called gender
But if Simone De Beauvoir's body is engaged in a performance, and if that
performance is prescribed by society, perhaps sex, for human beings, is
also a (gender) role?
|
Another photograph
How "natural" is photography?
Sometime between
1877
and
1893
the old nurse posed with her teenage charge
for a photograph by the new electric light
The teenagers name is
Charlotte Mew, from which you can work out that you should say
she and her.
But Charlotte thought (outrageous child) that she could imagine and write
as she liked, and so in her poetry she is sometimes him and sometimes her.
|
Sex and gender are
identity problems -
Modern mythology is creating new role models for us - which may pre-figure
the future
Gender is just one of those things that
Crona
does not know how to deal with.
|
Crona (Kurona meaning "Dark One") is a character in modern
mythology (see
manga). Crona is
a Demon Sword Master whose weapon, Ragnarok, resides permanently within
his/her blood. Crona is presented with an
ambiguous gender throughout the entire series and while there have been
hints toward Crona's sex in both directions, nothing definitive has been
presented.
|
Top of
Page
Click coloured words to go where you want
Andrew Roberts likes to hear from users: To contact him, please
use the Communication
Form
|
Headings
1949 marxism and psychoanalysis
The mirror
Determination and self-
determination
society and action
individual and society
Developing De Beauvoir
19th century socialist
feminism
Engels 1847: marriage and
family
community education
community sex
Owenism
Children
De Beauvoir on
communism in Russia
Freud
De Beauvoir
post-Freud
Lacan
Engels 1884
De Beauvoir
Firestone
Butler
|