Abstract
Since de Beauvoir’s bold pronouncement that ‘One is not born a woman’ feminists have been struggling with the subject in feminist theory. Each new iteration of the subject has been advanced by its adherents as the ‘right’ definition, superseding the flawed definition that preceded it. This pattern aptly describes the reception of de Beauvoir’s subject. Feminist theorists since de Beauvoir have been disdainful of her subject, rejecting it as a tainted example of existentialism that has nothing to offer contemporary feminist theory. In this article I will challenge this judgement, arguing that de Beauvoir’s approach to the subject reveals a highly nuanced understanding of the interaction of the social, natural, and psychological. I argue that, far from rejecting de Beauvoir’s subject, we can learn much from her approach.
The Introduction to the recent new translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex begins with a simple declarative sentence: ‘In 1946 Simone de Beauvoir began to outline what she thought would be an autobiographical essay explaining why, when she tried to define herself, the first sentence that came to mind was “I am a woman”’ (Thurman, 2010: ix). In writing the book, Beauvoir discovered that trying to explain what it meant to be a woman was far from simple. What started as an autobiographical essay turned into a two-volume, nearly 800-page analysis, ranging widely over a disparate group of elements that define ‘woman’. It made de Beauvoir famous (and infamous), and is commonly described as launching the contemporary feminist movement. While she has received some positive re-evaluation, particularly since the late 1980s, The Second Sex remains a text with a, at times, contentious relationship with feminism. In this article, I go back to Beauvoir’s original question and evaluate her work in light of the answer that she gave to it. Beauvoir asked the question that has oriented (and must orient) feminist theory: what, really, does it mean to say ‘I am a woman’? How do we go about answering that question and where does that answer lead us? What I want to emphasise here is that the question of the identity of ‘woman’ is the central question in the tradition of feminist theory that has evolved in the wake of Beauvoir’s work.
The identity of ‘woman’ is at the centre of the feminisms that have developed in the sixty years since The Second Sex. From liberal to psychoanalytic, to socialist, to postmodern, to material feminism, ‘woman’ hovers over each one of them. Each begins and ends with an understanding of the identity of woman both philosophically and socially. In other words, Beauvoir asked the question that would define the tradition of feminist theory that she initiated. But something else unites the feminisms of the last sixty years and these definitions of ‘woman’: most claim that previous attempts to define ‘woman’ were seriously flawed. I argue that it is much more productive to look at the last half-century and more of theories about the category of ‘woman’ as a positive cumulative enterprise. Our goal, in other words, should not be to (finally) get ‘woman’ right but, rather, to explore in contemporary terms what we can contribute to our understanding of this central concept, an understanding grounded in previous theories. Although it is undeniable that Beauvoir was heavily influenced by the philosophies of her day, most notably work by Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I argue that in taking on the question of ‘woman’, Beauvoir encountered an obstacle that effectively exploded the boundaries of these philosophies. The question of ‘woman’ did not fit into the vocabularies of any of the philosophical positions that were available to Beauvoir. As a result, she had to forge a new methodology in order to deal with the unique question of woman, a question that the tradition of Western philosophy had largely avoided. I am not claiming that Beauvoir articulated her rejection of previous philosophies clearly, but rather that she articulated a position that would define feminist theory in the aftermath of The Second Sex: the introduction of ‘woman’ into the philosophical tradition requires a radical change in method, a change that altered the tradition of philosophy.
‘Becoming’ woman
Beauvoir first addresses the ideas that will guide the discussion of women in The Second Sex in her collection of essays, The Ethics of Ambiguity (1948). 1 Her concern in this collection is to get at the essence of the human subject. At the beginning of the first essay she states that ‘[t]his privilege, which he alone possesses, of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of subjects, is what he shares with all his fellow men. In turn an object for others, he is nothing more than an individual in the collectivization on which he depends’ (Beauvoir, 1948: 7). She goes on to assert that as long as men have lived they have felt this ‘tragic ambiguity of their condition’ (1948: 7), ambiguity that, she later asserts, the reader must assume (1948: 9). This sets the tone for the analysis that follows, an analysis that, at least initially, follows the lines of Sartrean existentialism. The first implication of man’s ambiguous status is that there are not ‘foreign absolutes’, no ‘inhuman objectivity’ but, rather, it is human existence that makes value appear (1948: 14–15). Another way of expressing this ambiguity is that the fact of being a subject is a universal fact. The Cartesian cogito expresses both the most individual experience and the most objective truth, but the ethics of ambiguity denies that separate existents can be bound to each other and their individual freedom can forge laws valid for all (1948: 17–18). It is obvious from these initial statements that Beauvoir intends to fundamentally challenge the Western tradition, particularly as it relates to the subject.
As Beauvoir develops this concept, this ambiguity gets more complicated. Freedom is the source from which all signification and values spring. To will oneself moral and to will oneself free are one and the same decision. This theory places all human beings on a moral plane as seekers of freedom. But, as Beauvoir develops her theory, problems arise for this neat formulation. There are, Beauvoir asserts, exceptions to this principle. There are beings whose life slips by in an infantile world because, having been kept in a state of servitude and ignorance, they have no means of breaking the ceiling that is shielded over their bodies. Beauvoir initially cites the example of women and slaves to illustrate her point but as her argument progresses she turns her attention exclusively to women. Women in Western countries, she asserts, lack an apprenticeship in freedom and, what is worse, consent to their servitude (1948: 37–38). Women, in short, present a problem as they do not fit neatly into the parameters of the ethics of ambiguity. In this context, however, Beauvoir pulls back from the difficulties it poses. Instead she plunges into the issue of freedom and what it means for this theory. Freedom, she asserts, must project itself toward its own reality through a content whose value it establishes. It is not necessary for the object to seek to be, but it must desire that there be being. To will oneself free is to will that there be being in one and the same choice, they both imply the bond on each man with all others. It follows that ‘[t]o will that there be being is also to will that there be men by and for whom the world is endowed with human significations […] To make being “be” is to communicate with others by means of being’ (1948: 71). Freedom cannot will itself without aiming at an open future. It follows, Beauvoir asserts, that existentialism is not solipsism: thus ‘[t]o will oneself free is also to will others free’ (1948: 73). It follows then that there is a concrete bond between freedom and existence.
Later, Beauvoir described The Ethics of Ambiguity as the book that irritated her the most (Moi, 2008: 168). Reading The Ethics of Ambiguity can be frustrating, because the position she articulates here can lack the clarity of The Second Sex. A number of things, however, are clear from this collection. First, Beauvoir is distinguishing her position from the implicit solipsism of early Sartrean existentialism. As many have pointed out, Beauvoir’s concept of subjectivity and freedom in The Ethics of Ambiguity is specifically social: we cannot be without the being of others (Kruks, 1990: 93; Tidd, 1999: 15). Second, it emerges that the key to this social identity of ‘man’ is his existence, the specifics of his individual place in the society that gives him his being and his freedom. This point will become a major focus of The Second Sex. What is not clear, however, is how women fit into this scenario. In her commentary on The Ethics of Ambiguity, Toril Moi claims that for Beauvoir the human condition is characterised by ambiguity and conflict and that women embody this more than men (2008: 195). I argue that what Beauvoir is beginning to realise is that women change everything: they cannot fit into the definitions of freedom and existence that Beauvoir is so carefully laying out in The Ethics of Ambiguity. And the reason for this failure lies in women’s unique situation, what she here calls their ‘infantile world’. In The Ethics of Ambiguity Beauvoir sidesteps this problem. It is not until The Second Sex that she confronts the problem of women directly. And there it becomes clear that the ‘ambiguity’ of women’s situation is of an entirely different order than that of men’s. It also becomes clear that dealing with the ‘problem’ of women will necessitate a radically different approach. That the parameters of that problem are not clear should not be surprising because the scope of the problem demands a radically new approach. In The Second Sex she attempts to outline that approach.
Following in the footsteps of many feminist critics of Beauvoir, I have previously considered her approach as masculinist and epistemologically inconsistent (Hekman, 1999). Focusing on her concept of the Other as it is presented in The Second Sex, I have argued that Beauvoir’s claim that the One/Other relationship is primordial and that the One is gendered masculine precludes women from full subjectivity. Women cannot be the One, the fully human transcendent subject, and therefore Beauvoir in effect denies woman full subjectivity. It is easy to read Beauvoir this way. The first few pages of The Second Sex present the One/Other relationship as a fundamental and inescapable aspect of the human condition. Read outside the context of the rest of the book it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that this relationship holds out little hope for women. Men, who define themselves in opposition to women, are the One. But men are also the neutral standard that defines humanness while woman is both a negative and a lack: ‘[woman] is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the Subject; he is the Absolute; she is the Other’ (Beauvoir, 2010: 6). Women’s position in this scenario is unambiguously inferior. Women do not posit themselves essentially as subjects. They do not protest male sovereignty; rather, they are complicit in their definition of Other and they have done nothing to bring about a change. They have more in common with the men of their class than with other women. Furthermore, women derive advantages from this status as Other; to decline to be Other would be to renounce those advantages. The division of the sexes, Beauvoir concludes, is a biological given, not a moment in human history.
I, and many others, read these passages as an assessment of the hopeless condition in which women find themselves. ‘Fundamental’ and ‘primordial’ seem to offer no escape for women. Beauvoir declared that the purpose of her book was to assess the condition of women. These passages go a long way toward doing just that, revealing the underlying cause of women’s inferiority in society. But there is another way to read these passages, an interpretation that is more consistent with the subsequent arguments in the book and with Beauvoir’s overall approach to the problem of ‘woman’. What if we read these passages not as a brutally accurate description of the roots of woman’s inferiority in society, but rather as the challenge that women must meet and transcend? What if Beauvoir is saying, in effect, that the One/Other dichotomy gives women no way out, and thus it is incumbent on women to develop a new approach to find that way out? And, finally, what if Beauvoir is saying that the tradition of philosophy in the West fails to provide a way out, that introducing women into philosophy entails radical changes and reveals the poverty of those philosophical conceptions?
I argue that Beauvoir is arguing precisely this, although she does not say so directly in this or any other context. But discussions of the Other that recur with frequency throughout The Second Sex point in this direction. Early on she asserts that the perspective she will adopt is one of existentialist morality, a perspective that assumes that every subject posits itself concretely through projects: It accomplishes its freedom only by perpetually surpassing toward other freedoms; there is no other justification for present existence than its expansion toward an infinitely open future. Every time transcendence lapses into immanence there is a degradation of existence into ‘in-itself,’ of freedom into facticity; this fall is a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if the fall is inflicted on the subject, it takes the form of frustration and oppression; in both cases it is an absolute evil. Every individual concerned with justifying his existence experiences his existence as an infinite need to transcend himself. (2010: 16–17).
This, then, defines the situation into which woman is thrust. The uniqueness of woman is that she discovers and chooses herself in a world where men force her to assume herself as Other: ‘Woman’s drama lies in this conflict between the fundamental claim of every subject, which always posits itself as an essential and the demands of a situation that posits herself as an inessential’ (2010: 17). Beauvoir then asks a number of questions: how in the feminine condition can a human being accomplish herself? How can she find independence with dependence? Answering these questions, Beauvoir claims, is the task of the analysis ahead. But although she does not make the argument explicit in this context, the logic of her argument compels the further questions: do the presuppositions of the philosophical approach Beauvoir has articulated make it impossible to ‘solve’ the question of women? Does the topic of woman necessitate jettisoning this philosophy and, indeed, all previously articulated philosophical approaches? Does ‘woman’ change everything and necessitate something entirely new?
Beauvoir returns to the concept of the Other frequently in the course of The Second Sex (as she does in her fiction). But another theme emerges, that of ambiguity: And her ambiguity is that of the very idea of Other: it is that of the human condition as defined in its relation with the Other. It has already been said that the Other is Evil; but as it is necessary for the Good, it reverts to the Good […] through the Other, I accede to the Whole, but it separates me from the Whole; it is the door to infinity and the measure of my finitude. (2010: 163).
There are various ways to read this passage. In The Ethics of Ambiguity Beauvoir indicates that all human life is ambiguous; thus we should not find it surprising that woman’s life is also ambiguous. But it is also possible to read this passage as a critique of the philosophical presuppositions of the Other. Woman does not fit into the One/Other schema: she violates its boundaries, ruptures its ethics. Later, in discussing the myth of femininity that has defined women’s condition, Beauvoir comments that ‘[t]here is no question of expressing eternal truths here, but of describing the common ground from which all singular feminine existence stems’ (2010: 279). This entails an even more radical critique. What Beauvoir seems to be suggesting is that the question of woman does not fit within the parameters of the philosophical positions she has been espousing. What this entails is that the question of woman requires a radically new approach that jettisons previous philosophical methods.
This conclusion is borne out in the introduction to Volume II that begins with the famous line, ‘One is not born but rather becomes a woman’ (Beauvoir, 2010: 283). The following sentences supply the context of Beauvoir’s famous statement and throw a different light on its meaning: ‘[n]o biological, psychic or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society; it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine. Only the mediation of another can constitute an individual as an Other’ (2010: 283). Beauvoir’s point here is clear: in order to understand woman, and particularly her constitution as Other, we need to look at the broad array of factors that contribute to the constitution. No single factor defines her destiny: their interaction and interdependence construct her identity. It follows that to understand – and overthrow – the status of Other we then need to examine all of these factors. And, most importantly, we must consider woman in interaction with others. I want to concentrate on those issues that impinge on my investigation of Beauvoir’s subject. First is the question of method, which Beauvoir never defines explicitly. But as she moves through the elements of her analysis – the biological, the psychoanalytic, the historical, the economic – her method emerges in practice if not in theory. At the end of her chapter on biology she states that ‘we will clarify the biological data by examining them in light of ontological, economic, social, and psychological contexts’ (2010: 48). What Beauvoir calls woman’s enslavement to the species is, she declares, of extreme importance. Woman’s body is one of the essential elements of the situation she occupies in the world. ‘But’ – and this ‘but’ has great significance in this context – ‘her body is not enough to define her; it is a lived reality only as taken on by consciousness through actions and within a society’ (2010: 48). Biology alone does not define woman but neither does psychology nor economics. Beauvoir consistently rejects a monistic approach. Her method is composite: woman is defined by the confluence of elements that constitute her place in society.
These statements not only define Beauvoir’s method in The Second Sex but they also effectively refute the biological essentialism of which she has been accused by some (Evans, 1985: 61–62). Part of Chapter One of Volume I of The Second Sex is subtitled ‘Biological Data’. But Beauvoir makes it clear from the outset not only that woman is not defined by her body but that the body is not a fixed entity. However we want to regard the differences between men and women, she asserts, they do obviously exist (2010: 41). But while woman is different biologically from man it does not follow from this that her biology is her destiny. In a series of arguments that is consistent with the rejection of universals throughout the book, Beauvoir agrees that woman, like man, is her body but that her body is something other than herself (2010: 41). This aspect of Beauvoir’s work is immensely important, not only in her work but in subsequent feminist analyses. She is countering the abstraction that is at the centre of the Western philosophical tradition and opposing it with an understanding of woman as located, particularly in her body, without presupposing essentialism.
Toward the end of the book, in a chapter on women’s situation and character, Beauvoir states: The woman does not positively think that the truth is other than what men claim: rather, she holds that there is no truth. It is not only life’s becoming that makes her suspicious of the principle of identity, nor the magic phenomena surrounding her that ruin the notion of causality: it is at the heart of the masculine world itself, it is in her as belonging to this world, that she grasps the ambiguity of all principles, of all values, of all that exists. She knows that when it comes to her, masculine morality is a vast mystification. (2010: 651; emphasis in original).
Taken out of context this offers an almost perfect proof of the thesis that I am advancing regarding Beauvoir: that her consideration of woman compels her to jettison masculine philosophy and adopt a radically different approach. But, unfortunately for the neatness of my thesis, this is not an accurate interpretation of this particular passage. The context of Beauvoir’s remarks is a discussion of the powerlessness that women experience at the hands of men. It is a condemnation of particular practices rather than an overall indictment of the poverty of masculine thought. It is an indication, however, of the direction of Beauvoir’s thought concerning masculinist philosophies. Although she does not state her position as clearly as might be, she is beginning to question the validity of all philosophical systems for understanding the position of women. In the conclusion, Beauvoir reverts to the philosophical position that she, at least ostensibly, employed throughout the course of her analysis. She begins with a summary of what that analysis has established: that there is no ‘original curse’ that condemns men and women to tear each other apart or a psychological destiny imposed on women (2010: 753). Woman today, she claims, seeks to emerge into the light of transcendence. But she stands in front of man not as a subject, but as an object paradoxically endowed with subjectivity. She assumes herself as both self and other which is a contradiction with disconcerting consequences. The vicious cycle is difficult to break out of because each sex is victim both of the other and of itself (2010: 754–755).
Change will come, Beauvoir concludes, not from individual women, but from society itself. What will this change bring about? For Beauvoir, when the slavery of half of humanity is abolished, the division of humanity will reveal its authentic meaning and the human couple will discover its true form. And, finally, to unequivocally affirm their ‘brotherhood’ the relation of man to woman will emerge: ‘It therefore reveals the extent to which man’s natural behavior has become human or the extent to which the human essence in him has become a natural essence – the extent to which his human nature has come to be natural to him’ (2010: 766; emphasis in original). Beauvoir has seemingly lapsed into romantic dreams of a better world that have little relationship to her preceding analysis. But another interpretation is possible. The fact that these passages verge on incoherence once more suggests that Beauvoir realises the impossibility of the philosophical position she claims to espouse. The terminology of subject and object leaves us in the impossible position in which men and women are both and neither. Surely this is not the solution that Beauvoir is seeking. This is borne out in the final passage in which Beauvoir suggests an intriguing possibility that has not previously surfaced in her discussions: the collapse of the natural/human dichotomy. What Beauvoir is saying here is that we should stop looking for the natural essence that grounds human existence and accept that human nature is natural. This has all kinds of echoes in contemporary thought, but even aside from this it once more leads to the conclusion that Beauvoir is looking beyond the categories of her philosophical heritage. Even though Beauvoir stubbornly clings to that philosophical heritage, the import of her book is to reveal its inability to deal with the advent of women into philosophy.
Interpreting Beauvoir
One of the recurring themes in Beauvoir criticism is the charge of masculinism. Beauvoir, it is claimed, uncritically adopts the philosophical heritage of her contemporaries, particularly that of Sartre, and, crucially, fails to contest the masculinism that pervades these philosophies. On one level this criticism is irrefutable. Beauvoir clearly starts from the basic premises of existentialism and phenomenology to frame her discussions. But as I have illustrated above, this is only one aspect of her approach. She begins with the basic terminology of these masculinist philosophies but, in the course of her analysis, finds them wanting. What emerges from this is by no means clear-cut. It does not result in a definite rejection of her philosophical heritage or her articulation of an alternative, but, rather a destabilising of the assumptions and categories of the original philosophies. Much of the discussion of Beauvoir’s philosophical position revolves around an analysis of where she stands relative to the influential philosophies of her day. Eva Lundgren-Gothlin, for example, argues that The Second Sex should be interpreted from the perspective of Sartrean philosophy, but also as influenced by Hegelianism, Marxism, and phenomenological existentialism (1996: 3). There is much discussion in the Beauvoir literature about her relationship to these various schools of thought, noting the elements in her work that relate to each respectively. 2 These commentaries are correct in that the influence of these philosophical positions is irrefutable. What is significant about Beauvoir’s work, however, is how she departs from the masculinist philosophical tradition, not how she conforms to it. This departure is, I argue, at the heart of Beauvoir’s approach.
It is not surprising that many commentators on Beauvoir and The Second Sex focus on her relationship to Sartrean existentialism. Here there does seem to be a consensus of sorts: that Beauvoir has moved away from the strict existentialist ontology that Sartre articulated. There is a chorus of critics who place Beauvoir outside of Sartrean existentialism. For example, Jo-Ann Pilardi claims that The Second Sex ‘greatly weakens existential ontology’ (1991: 148), while Emily Grosholz asserts that Beauvoir’s consideration of women’s oppression ‘draws her out of existentialism’ (2009: 202). Karen Vintges goes so far as to claim that Beauvoir’s departure from Sartre places her close to the postmoderns (1996: 5). 3 What these critics claim is that Beauvoir starts with Sartrean existentialism but she does not end with it. Beauvoir finds a particular aspect of Sartre’s ontology wanting: the abstract subject. At the heart of Sartre’s existentialism, particularly as articulated in Being and Nothingness (2001), is an isolated consciousness who is the source of knowledge. 4 It is this aspect of Sartre’s ontology that Beauvoir comes to reject. For her, subjects are situated and necessarily connected to other subjects. The subject that emerges from the analysis of The Second Sex is situated, connected, and embodied, not isolated and alone. Sonia Kruks states this very forcibly: ‘[t]he embodied subject of The Second Sex is social through and through, a gendered subject whose freedom is situated, at best partial, at worst rendered immanent’ (2001: 49). It is this concept of the subject that defines the uniqueness of Beauvoir’s approach.
At the heart of Beauvoir’s relevance is a concept that permeates The Second Sex and defines its departure not only from Sartre, but from the other philosophical influences at work in her writings: in The Prime of Life (1962) Beauvoir wrote that ‘I have attempted to show in my book The Second Sex why a woman’s situation still, even today, prevents her from exploring the world’s basic problems’ (1962: 38). The consideration of women brings about profound changes. Their unique situation in human society necessitates a concept of freedom that departs not only from Sartre’s individualism, but, more broadly, from the pillar of modern philosophy, the Cartesian cogito. What is required is a philosophy that begins with humans in particular situations, not individuals as abstract entities. But it goes deeper than this. Since its inception, philosophy has sought to tackle knowledge itself. What Beauvoir is suggesting here is that this may not be possible, or, alternately, may not be the appropriate task of philosophy. It is her reflection on women’s situation that has led her to this conclusion. In an interview with Margaret Simons, Beauvoir asserts that she is not a philosopher because a philosopher is someone who creates a system which, she asserts, she has not done (Simons, 1999: 11). Her intent lies not in the big picture but in the specifics of woman’s situation.
I am not alone in focusing on the concept of situation in Beauvoir’s work. 5 Kruks argues that, in Being and Nothingness, Sartre cannot account for the existence of social groups of various kinds, of social organisations and structures. By contrast, Beauvoir, as early as The Ethics of Ambiguity, argues that freedom needs an open future that only others can give, and that subjectivity cannot exist without intersubjectivity (Kruks, 1990: 92). As a consequence, in The Second Sex, Beauvoir develops a concept of being as embodied subjectivity as always intersubjective. Kruks argues that Beauvoir’s work implied that the notion of subjectivity must be rethought in terms of the significance of the body and the weight of social institutions for human situation (1990: 17). I want to take Kruk’s insight a step further and assert that Beauvoir did indeed rethink subjectivity on the basis of her analysis of the situation of women in The Second Sex. She found that women’s situation prevents her from embracing the kind of freedom that Sartrean existentialism identified. What Beauvoir discovered in her analysis of women’s situation is that there are situations against which individual action is powerless. Sartre is wrong: there are situations, and that of women is one of them, in which the individual is so constrained by circumstances that she cannot achieve freedom. It follows that a radically different concept of freedom is needed to encompass this. Moi’s discussion of situation in Beauvoir is even more pointed. She argues that Beauvoir’s statement that the body is a situation is a completely original contribution to feminist theory that provides an alternative to contemporary sex and gender theories (Moi, 1999: 59). The body as situation is deeply related to the individual’s subjectivity: it is not outside of her, but is bound up with the way she uses her freedom. The body is engaged in a dialectical interaction with its surroundings. For Moi, Beauvoir is at root an existentialist: we must take the fact of women’s concrete existence as our starting point for philosophy (1999: 189). Again, I agree, but I want to push this thesis further to a more radical position that moves outside the Western tradition. As Kruks points out, although Beauvoir started with existentialism, she ultimately found it wanting. Her move into more original philosophical territory constitutes the significance of her position.
In her commentary on The Second Sex, Judith Butler echoes these arguments: ‘Beauvoir’s dialectic of self and other argues the limits of a Cartesian version of disembodied freedom and criticizes implicitly the model of autonomy upheld by these masculine gender norms’ (1987: 133). She goes on to assert that Beauvoir suggests an alternative to the gender polarity of masculine disembodiment and feminine enslavement to the body with the notion of body as a situation. The body is a material reality that has already been located within a social control. The body is the situation of having to take up and interpret that set of received interpretations (Butler, 1987: 133). Butler takes her interpretation of Beauvoir into territory that has become the central focus of her own work. For Beauvoir, Butler claims, we are culturally constructed but in some sense we also construct ourselves. The problem becomes, then, how gender can be a matter of choice and a cultural construction. To address this problem, Butler turns again to the issue of situation. One is one’s body from the start and one becomes one’s gender; the movement from sex to gender is internal to embodied life, a sculpting of the original body into a cultural form. It does not follow, however, that gender is traceable to a definable origin because gender is an originating activity incessantly taking place. To choose a gender is to interpret received gender norms in a way that reproduces and organises them anew (Butler, 1987: 128–131). Anyone familiar with Butler’s arguments in Gender Trouble will see a striking similarity between her interpretation of Beauvoir and the discussion of sex and gender in that book. Beauvoir’s analysis of the relationship between sex and gender is complex. She does not define the dichotomy between sex and gender as mirroring that between nature and culture, a position frequently attributed to her. 6 Rather she begins with the situated character of women’s lives as a way of understanding the possibility of freedom for women. Her conclusion is that women cannot remove themselves from this situation but, rather, are forced to conform to the norms that structure that situation. Although Beauvoir would not go so far as to assert, as Butler does in Gender Trouble, that gender produces sex rather than vice versa, Butler is right to see the elements of her argument in Beauvoir’s theory. Butler is one of the few interpreters of Beauvoir who sees the radical implications of her work. Although most commentators of Beauvoir’s work are sympathetic to her project, only a few, notably Butler, Kruks, and Moi, argue for an interpretation of Beauvoir that I am arguing for here – a radical rethinking of the philosophical heritage. With these critics I am arguing for an interpretation of Beauvoir as launching feminism into what Louis Althusser would call a new continent of thought.
Conclusion
In All Said and Done, Beauvoir asserts that ‘If I were to write The Second Sex today I should provide a materialistic, not an idealistic, theoretical foundation for the opposition between the Same and the Other. I should base the rejection and oppression of the Other not on antagonistic awareness but upon the economic explanation of scarcity’ (1974: 483–484). There are passages in The Second Sex in which she seems to be arguing that women must transcend the problems created by the Same/Other. This passage seems to repudiate that argument. Another reading, however, might be that Beauvoir was conflicted about this issue but, in her later work, tended more toward a materialist view. This passage resonates strongly with contemporary feminists. 7 After decades of linguistic monism, feminists are bringing the material back into feminist theory and practice. This passage evokes the theme that characterises this shift in feminist theory. It would, however, be an anachronism to label Beauvoir a materialist in the sense we mean it today. It would not be anachronistic to assert, however, that Beauvoir, like the new materialists, defines the identity of women as a complex mix of cultural and material factors. That her position has much in common with that of the new materialists, thus, is significant. It is important to our contemporary understanding of both Beauvoir’s position and the feminine subject. What, then, is of enduring significance in Beauvoir’s work? I have argued here that it is how, through her analysis, she revealed that bringing the question of woman into the philosophical canon deconstructs that canon. Women simply do not ‘fit’. They explode the categories that have defined philosophy since its inception. Beauvoir never states this directly and her work can seem confused. But this confusion has a cause and that cause is the radical nature of what she is doing. Although it is possible to see glimpses of the radical direction necessitated by the topic of women in previous thinkers, Beauvoir brings this out in the open and makes it the centrepiece of her work.
I am not alone in considering the implications of this. Linda Singer asserts that by naming sex and sex differences as repressed structures of philosophical discourse, Beauvoir recasts the nature and scope of philosophical discourse (1990: 324). Nancy Bauer argues that Beauvoir dramatises the extent to which being a woman poses a philosophical problem (2001: 1). Margaret Simons (2010) identifies what she calls an impasse in Beauvoir scholarship. She claims that in her posthumously published diaries Beauvoir makes it clear that she is, indeed, a philosopher and that her intention from the outset was to answer philosophical questions. Simons notes that Beauvoir’s assertions in her memoirs and interviews that she is not a philosopher misrepresent those intentions. The unanswered question in Beauvoir scholarship, Simons argues, is why she gave up philosophy in the late 1950s. The argument I present here addresses this question. Beauvoir abandoned philosophy because she found it inadequate to the issue that commanded her attention: the situation of women. She moved away from the philosopher’s concern with eternal truths as she began to explore the situated truths of women’s existence. Ever since Beauvoir, feminists have been arguing about the identity of the subject and how we can best characterise the conundrum of woman. Beauvoir’s work reveals clearly and forcefully why ‘woman’ has been so problematic. We can approach the question from the perspective of various philosophers but none of them will be satisfactory because ‘woman’ does not fit into any of them. We are forced, in a sense, to start over, to reinvent what we are doing as women in philosophy, and, perhaps, in the process to reinvent philosophy. Another advantage of reading Beauvoir today is closely connected to the first: her emphasis on situation. What Beauvoir found at the centre of her investigation of women was that it was impossible to separate woman from her situation in society. This situation defines everything: her identity, the possibility of freedom, the possibility of change. Situation gives feminist investigators, particularly feminist investigators of the subject, its grounding. Woman’s situatedness is the starting point of feminist philosophy, an endeavour that defines a whole new approach in philosophy.
Finally, it is impossible not to connect Beauvoir’s focus on situation to the contemporary feminist interest in the material. I am not arguing that Beauvoir’s approach presages that of material feminism, but only that there is an affinity between the two and that this affinity is significant. Beauvoir’s approach is multi-faceted rather than monolithic. Her analysis in The Second Sex rejects the monism of biology, economics, anthropology, or any other single approach. This rejection of monism also characterises the current approach of material feminism. As Andrew Pickering puts it, knowledge is a mangle, a complex mix of disparate forces in which no one element predominates (1995). In The Second Sex Beauvoir teaches us that the identity of woman is a mangle, that no one element of her identity is alone constitutive, and that the factors intra-act to form the whole.