more thoughts on the biological

Am still stuck on the biological stuff – sorry for harping on about this. But I am intrigued by her descriptions of the body, and how she interconnects the various somata. I am assuming, after some thought, that the use of soma is to emphasise the body of the organism (what we in Danish would call legeme, as distinct from krop, which means body) from the body, which is soma+situation. Is that too simplistic and does it read a postmodern sex/gender distinction into Beauvoir? Her point is, it seems to me, that while the female soma has things in common with other somata (sorry for sounding like a wanker with this plural), the human female is also distinct by virtue of the resistance to the subordination to the species, experience of destiny and process of distinction from the male (p. 39). This destiny which women experience, what would that be? From the immediate context, I would have assumed that it was this subordination to the species, but would that not go against her denial that biological data form a fixed identity (p.45), or should we read on to where she says: ‘In truth these facts cannot be denied, but they do not carry their meaning in themselves’?

This brings me to my next point: The gendered discourse of science.

As soon as we accept a human perspective defining the body starting from existence, biology becomes an abstract science; when the physiological given (muscular inferiority) takes on meaning, this meaning immediately becomes dependant on a whole context; ‘weakness’ is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.

Is she here accepting scientific discourse as gendered, or as a given, before contextualised meaning is bestowed? And would this not be crucial to the discussion raised by Jess, when this was just a googlegroup:

I think there's a difference between 'One is not born, but becomes a woman' and 'One is not born, but becomes, woman,' are different, definitely, but even based on Moi's discussion, I think there's more to be unpacked: French does, after all, tend to multitask! (That is, Moi says that Beauvoir rejects 'Woman' as a patriarchal myth, so she could never mean the second sentence, but I personally think that the idea that one becomes Woman because one lives in the context of such patriarchal myth is far more interesting and useful! And more proximate, imo, to Irigaray...)

To which Jennifer replied:

Interesting .... I have always assumed that Beauvoir meant the second of the
two.

I am chewing my way through Dialectic of Enlightenment and its feminist expansion, Nicht Ich, by Christina von Braun, and so am very influenced by the viewpoint of the patriarchal myth, which Jess connects to Irigaray.

Any thoughts?

Biological Data II (34-49) read by Christina

Biological Data II (34-49) read by Christina

Moving on from females as mere enslaved egg-sacks, and males as mere enslaved fertiliser of the species, to the ‘higher forms of life’ (34) reproduction both maintains the species and creates new individuals. These include fish, toads and birds. As far as I can tell, the difference here is not only that the father plays a nurturing role, but also that the offspring are cared for, which suspends the reproduction drive. And then we come to the mammal, where maintaining and creating is sexed. The mother is closer to the offspring than the father, the female is ‘determined by the servitude of maternity’, while the male is presented as a sexual predator. Females are prey to the species, regulated by a sexual cycle (she will repeat this argument with humans), which moves in two phases. During heat she may invite the male, but never initiates coitus: the male imposes himself on her; very often she submits to him with indifference or even resists him. Whether she is provocative or consensual, it is he in any case who takes her: she is taken’ (35, italics in original) [Andrea Dworkin?]. The male penetrates and thus dominates the female, while she receives and endures. 

And then comes a sentence, which I don’t get, do you? She says (p. 36 a bit above the middle): ‘although she feels the sexual need as an individual need ... she nevertheless experiences the sexual adventure in its immediacy as an interior story and not in relation to the world and to others.’ It is this last bit, the difference between an interior story and in relation to the world, which I don’t quite understand. 

So after this violation comes alienation, which is when the foetus is carried: ‘inhabited by another who is nourished by her substance, the female is both herself and other than herself during the whole gestation period (36). After the birth, the female devotes herself to the young, abdicating her individuality for the benefit of the species which demands this abdication (37). The male on the other hand ‘separates himself and is confirmed in himself’. The male is thus posited as an individual, confirmed in the aggression against his fellow creatures. The cycles that effect the male are much less pervasive and exhausting than those afflicting the female. At the top of the animal scale, the two sexes thus ‘represent two diverse aspects of the species’ life’ (38). This opposition is not passive/active, nor change/permanence. Perhaps maintenance and creation signifies best, what is at stake for both sexes. And then we come to Woman, who in relation to other females is the most individualises, fragile, experiences destiny strongest and distinguishes herself from male most significantly (39). From 39-43 Beauvoir launches a detailed description of the reproduction cycle in the human body, but most detailed in the female body. Puberty is where the species installs itself in her, and is as such a crisis. Menopause, when the species releases its grip is another difficult crisis.

On page 44 she notes the consequences of the sexual differentiations, namely the ‘hormonal actions that determine her soma’. [Does anyone know if there is a specific reason for using soma instead of body?] She begins with skeletal structure, muscular power, respiratory capacity, blood weight, vascular system. In general women’s system is less stable, which leads to vascular variations and convulsive attacks. This, Beauvoir attributes to the subordination to the species. And her point is, that women resist this alienation much more forcefully than any other female: ‘her destiny appears even more fraught the more she rebels against it by affirming herself as an individual’ (44). All of this biological data Beauvoir sees as an essential element of women’s situation. This is because of her emphasis on the body as ‘instrument of our hold on the world’ and ‘a situation’ (46) and the notion of humanity constantly in the making (45). But at the same time she refuses ‘the idea that they form a fixed destiny for her’ (45). The body, as dissected by Beauvoir does not, in her opinion, constitute the basis for sexual hierarchy, the construction of woman as Other or condemn her to this subjugated role.

This is fascinating, and I can’t quite figure out whether it disturbs me or not. If I understand her correctly, what she wants to show is how the ‘humanity in the making’, the ‘being who is transcendence and surpassing’ in the case of women is limited by these particular factors along with the economic and social situation. All of these factors set the parameters of possibilities – is that what you get too?  

Biological Data I (21-34) read by Christina

This chapter seeks to understand the word ‘female’ – which, from what Toril Moi says, signifies the animal female in French (femelle), in other words a she-animal (Moi 1999, pp. 60-61). It is an examination of the biological justification of male hostility, which means that the behaviour of she-animals is projected on to women.

She begins by introducing two reproductive systems which do not require male and female interaction: elementary organisms which multiply without sexes and hermaphroditic species, and how even these reproductive means have been subsumed into a hierarchy of sexuality, where the sexual reproduction is seen to be fundamental (26).

After complicating the narrative of reproduction and its ‘differentiation of individuals into males and females’, Beauvoir then jumps to philosophy and shows how this sexual differentiation has had an aprioristic status in Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, and Hegel – not entirely sure I grasped the Hegel bit though. Is it that Hegel inadvertently points to what she was arguing earlier about asexual reproduction? From Hegel we move on to Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, and this bit I found to be somewhat tricky:

Beauvoir claims that men define the sexes and their relations through sexual activity, Beauvoir argues, ‘sexual activity is not necessarily implied in the human being’s nature’ (24). Quoting Merleau-Ponty, who claims that existence is primary, she argues that the body conditions existence (a consciousness without a body is rigorously inconceivable, p. 24), and that sexual differentiation is not necessary for the perpetuation of the species. [Is this what she is saying?]

She moves on to discuss the role of the two sexes in procreation in various settings: matrilineal primitive societies, and patriarchal conceptualisations, such as Aristotle, Hippocrates and a handful of others up to the 17^th century [sounds like the time frame in Thomas Laqueur’s Making Sex], which argued that the woman merely ‘fattened a living and active, and perfectly constituted, principle’ (25).  Aristotle’s ideas were perpetuated by Hegel, who saw man as the active principle and women as passive.

The points made in these paragraphs are

i)                   Sexual reproduction has been favoured as a more advanced or perfected stage of reproduction. The attempt to view it as such is to universalize ‘life’s specific processes’ and to ‘ascribe meaning to vital phenomena’ (26).

ii)                 ‘Any living fact indicates transcendence and that a project is in the making in every function’ (26) [???].

An analysis of the fertilisation process, where male and female cooperate, refutes two biases: one, that the female is passive. The spark springs from the meeting of the two, it is not inherent in the sperm. Second, the permanence of the species is guaranteed by the female. The ovum has material for future nourishment: ‘it is constituted to nourish the life that will awaken in it’ (29), which the sperm isn’t. Beauvoir’s point is that the role of the two gametes is identical, they are both necessary in the process of generating new life. However, in the secondary phenomena the male element affects change, while the female element provides the stable environment.

This has been used to argue that women’s place is in the home (Fouillèe) and that there is a direct correlation between the ovum and the female. She then argues at length through multiple examples how it is ‘difficult to give a generally valid description of the notion of female’ and that ‘gametes and gonads are not microcosms of the whole organism (31). She then begins at the bottom of the animal ladder to argue how life becomes more individual. At the bottom, females’ existence is enslaved to the species, she just produces eggs. She gives vivid accounts of termites, ants and bees, and how the queen lays eggs ceaselessly [This somehow reminds me of Byatt’s Morpho Eugenia, has anyone read it?]. Beauvoir is arguing against the idea that the insect female enslaves and devours the male, which has generated the myth of devouring femininity. Instead, she argues, ‘it is the species that devours both of them in different ways’ (33).

 I’ll return with the last 15 pages tomorrow.

Happy International Women's day! De te fabula narratur!

References

Moi, Toril. 1999. What is a Woman? And Other Essays (Oxford University Press).

'Damn, day is gone' by Christina

Hey there,
I was hoping to post something on chapter 1 today, but the day disappeared completely.

Will have something up tomorrow. But I have to say that I really enjoyed this chapter! I didn’t think I would, though. It was especially the stuff about the tyranny of the species, which I, pushing forty, am feeling and have been feeling the last couple of years. Increased PMS (in time span and in force), severely increased back pains, not to mention abdominal cramps and surges that all seem to me as ‘something’ trying to tell me that I am moving into my last stages of reproductive possibility. And yet these intensified hormonal surges are still not accompanied by a desire for children. So I very much feel that my body is a crazy battlefield, with my body not quite understanding what I actually want, so that it can give up the fight and spare me these monthly onslaughts. What I am going through really feels like what Beauvoir calls the tyranny of the species, with my body being ‘the prey of a stubborn and foreign life that makes and unmakes a crib in her every month’ (42). Anyway, that came to mind while working with this chapter. So, will post reading of Biological Data tomorrow.