So, hello and welcome to this NPTEL course
entitled 'Feminist Writing' where we are looking
at and studying Simone de Beauvoir's introduction
to the 'Second Sex'.
We have already had one lecture on this text
and now we move on with this text and this
particular lecture.
Now, if you remember where we stopped last
time, Beauvoir talks about how the woman is
defined as a lack and how the woman is defined
as a position (())(0:37) the man who is obviously
universal phenomenon.
So, in that sense, woman becomes the Other,
Other to the man so the man becomes the universal
category, the man becomes the universal location
compared to which the woman becomes the peculiar
location, the accidental location, the interrupted
location, the incomplete location.
Now, it is very important for us to understand
how is this idea of the Other produced.
So the production of the Other, or the othering
is something which happens in almost every
narrative of exploitation, every narrative
of domination.
There is colonialism, there is racism, there
is patriarchy, etc.
This model is something which we can use quite
conveniently and map it on to other contexts
as well.
So, this is Beauvoir, moving on, and talking
about how the Other is produced.
"The category of the Other is as primordial
as consciousness itself.
In the most primitive societies, in the most
ancient mythologies, one finds the expression
of a duality – that of the Self and the
Other.
This duality was not originally attached to
the division of the sexes; it was not dependent
on any empirical facts.
It is revealed in such works as that of Granet
on Chinese thought and those of Dumézil on
the East Indies and Rome.
The feminine element was at first no more
involved in such pairs as Varuna-Mitra, Uranus-Zeus,
Sun-Moon, and Day-Night than it was in the
contrasts between Good and Evil, lucky and
unlucky auspices, right and left, God and
Lucifer.
Otherness is a fundamental category of human
thought."
Now this is a very important statement - Otherness
is a fundamental category of human thought
because what that means essentially is that
human thought always produces an idea of the
Other so any form of identity formation is
like a map making so if you make any map,
for instance, any act of map making is an
act of inclusion and equally is an act of
exclusion because the moment you draw a map
of somewhere, you are including certain space
and also equally you are excluding certain
spaces.
And likewise, human thought or human thought
of production of identities always creates
simultaneously the Other identity.
So the moment you create an identity of your
own, you need to create an identity of self,
outside the identity parameter.
So the otherness as the fundamental category
of human thought is how human imagination
functions especially when it comes to identity
formation.
"Thus it is that no group ever sets itself
up as the One without at once setting up the
Other over against itself."
So no group, whether it is a group of racism,
group of men, group of any kind of ethnicity;
no group formation happens without taking
up the consideration of the Other as opposed
to itself.
"If three travellers chance to occupy the
same compartment, that is enough to make vaguely
hostile ‘others’ out of all the rest of
the passengers on the train.
In small-town eyes all persons not belonging
to the village are ‘strangers’ and suspect;"
So the whole idea of strangers becomes important
over here.
Who is a stranger?
A stranger is someone who you don't recognize,
you don't recognize as one of your own, someone
who comes from the outside.
So in a small-town eyes all persons not belonging
to the village become Other by default and
become suspicious.
That is the whole process of becoming another.
"Suspect to the native of a country all who
inhabit other countries are ‘foreigners’;
Jews are ‘different’ for the anti-Semite,
Negroes are ‘inferior’ for American racists,
aborigines are ‘natives’ for colonists,
proletarians are the ‘lower class’ for
the privileged."
So the whole idea of the lower class, savages,
foreigners, different, inferior; they are
all spoken from a position of privilege, from
a subject position.
So who are they inferior compared to?
Who are they lower class compared to?
So it becomes a relative conditioning.
So what is assumed over here is that there
is a fundamental category which is universal,
there's a fundamental category which is vertical,
so to say, as opposed to which is an imagination
of verticality, imagination of universality
which is one of the first conditions of identity
formation that if you create a hypothesis
whereby certain identity becomes the benchmark,
it becomes the 0 point, the touchstone for
every other kind of identity.
And how do you define the touchstone?
How do you determine what is the touchstone?
That brings into the positions of power, that
brings in discourses of power, privilege,
hierarchy, etc.
Right.
Okay.
So, "Lévi-Strauss, at the end of a profound
work on the various forms of primitive societies,
reaches the following conclusion: ‘Passage
from the state of Nature to the state of Culture
is marked by man’s ability to view biological
relations as a series of contrasts; duality,
alternation, opposition, and symmetry, whether
under definite or vague forms, constitute
not so much phenomena to be explained as fundamental
and immediately given data of social reality.’
"
This is a very important statement that Lévi-Strauss,
the anthropologist makes that de Beauvoir
is drawing on and Lévi-Strauss is talking
about the passage from Nature to Culture.
When you move from the natural to the cultural
in any kind of society, in any kind of demography,
to primitive societies, any primitive society
and make some effort or historically it is
moved towards being cultural from the natural
and that journey from natural to cultural
has always happened, has always taken place
through a production of dualities.
The production of otherness.
Evil versus good, dark versus light, desirable
desirable versus undesirable; that is how
culture is formed because any formation of
culture is dependent on the production of
Other.
So thus that transition from a natural to
cultural is dependent on the necessity or
the possibility of producing the Other.
And that's something that Lévi-Strauss talks
about quite clearly.
Okay.
So "Series of contrasts; duality, alternation,
opposition, and symmetry, whether under definite
or vague forms, constitute not so much phenomena
to be explained as fundamental and immediately
given data of social reality.’"
So it's not really necessary to explain logically
the duality, the symmetry, the differences
and power, etc.
But what is more important is that these are
taken for granted and internalized and consumed
as social reality or data of social reality
which of course is imagined data.
This is fantastic data as it were or pseudo
data but this data became very important and
almost vital data for the production of culture,
the production of cultural identities so this
movement from nature to culture depends on
the production of opposites, the production
of Others, the production of dualities, the
production of opposites, the production of
all kinds of conflicts because that defines
the way identities are formed in a certain
cultural context.
Right?
So, culture is dependent on the production
of Other and there are very vital in an organic
way.
And that is something that Lévi-Strauss speaks
about from a logical perspective and obviously
Beauvoir is drawing from Lévi-Strauss in
saying that how this kind of formation from
nature to culture is operative even with the
patriarchy because what is defined as move
towards culture is move towards mass community
of maleness so men have culture, men have
cultural space, men inhabit public spaces
of culture.
Whereas women are relegated to being bodies
only, to being nature only and that contrast
is a very convenient contrast for patriarchy
to operate and continue to discriminate and
continue to hierarchize itself as opposed
to women.
So "these phenomena would be incomprehensible
if in fact human society were simply a Mitsein
or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness."
So, if human society was simply an act of
solidarity and a Mitsein is a human condition
where solidarity or comradeship or collaboration
takes place.
Now, if that were the case, if human society
were simply solidarity then this would be
impossibility.
There would be no necessity to create contrast,
to create opposites but you find that you
create opposites is because we don't really
belong, we don't really have a Mitsein or
fellowship based on comradeship and solidarity
and friendliness.
Every culture, instead, is basically conditioned
to produce out of opposites, produce out of
differences, produce out of hierarchies, etc.
"Things become clear, on the contrary, if,
following Hegel, we find in consciousness
itself a fundamental hostility towards every
other consciousness; the subject can be posed
only in being opposed – he sets himself
up as the essential, as opposed to the other,
the inessential, the object."
Right so the subject poses itself only in
being opposed.
The position, opposition go hand-in-hand and
this is a really beautiful sentence and it
really sums it up so well and so coherently
where Beauvoir is quite clearly saying that
every act of subject position requires a subject
opposition.
So position and opposition go hand-in-hand.
So if you want to occupy the position of a
subject, you need to create an opposition
apropos of which your position is produced.
Right.
So, she draws on Hegel and says if you follow
Hegel, you will find in consciousness itself
a fundamental hostility towards every other
consciousness.
So the whole idea of Mitsein as being a human
condition categorized to solidarity and fellowship
is a utopian condition, ideal condition which
doesn't exist.
Now what does exist still is the idea of culture,
is the idea of position, of subject position
which requires a position in order for positionality
to be produced.
Right?
So, in order to be essential, you have to
produce the inessential; in order to have
a position, you have to produce the oppositions.
So, that necessity to produce opposites, the
necessity to produce the Other is unfortunately
the true human condition as per the ideas
of Mitsein and of fellowship based on solidarity
and friendliness.
This idea becomes very helpful and very crucial
and de Beauvoir's study of femininity and
masculinity over here.
"But the other consciousness, the other ego,
sets up a reciprocal claim.
The native travelling abroad is shocked to
find himself in turn regarded as a ‘stranger’
by the natives of neighboring countries.
As a matter of fact, wars, festivals, trading,
treaties, and contests among tribes, nations,
and classes tend to deprive the concept Other
of its absolute sense and to make manifest
its relativity; willy-nilly, individuals and
groups are forced to realize the reciprocity
of their relations.
How is it, then, that this reciprocity has
not been recognized between the sexes, that
one of the contrasting terms is set up as
the sole essential, denying any relativity
in regard to its correlative and defining
the latter as pure otherness?"
Now, this is where de Beauvoir begins to get
more and more... she begins to calibrate the
sub-categories within this otherness.
So she says quite clearly that if you travel
through festivals, if you travel through nations,
if you travel through any kind of collaborative
categories, you find that the whole idea of
otherness becomes quite diluted because you
realize that you are in a position apropos
some other position.
So that reciprocity is recognized to a certain
extent when it comes to race, when it comes
to ethnicities, when it comes to language,
when it comes to culture, etc.
Now, the question then that obviously arises
is how come this reciprocity, or the recognition
of reciprocity hasn't come into being or has
not appeared when it comes to the sexes, when
it comes to the male versus female thing?
Right.
So how is it that we still don't hear talk
about the woman as being the inessential,
as being the incomplete counterpart of man,
etc.
Okay.
So, "why is it that women do not dispute male
sovereignty?
No subject will readily volunteer to become
the object, the inessential;" so any act human
being with dignity or any human subject with
dignity would not want or would not desire
to be the object which is inessential, which
is required for someone else to be essential.
So no one will accept it without any kind
of contest or any kind of resistance.
So what is the peculiar case of this sexual
difference, of this gender difference which
makes it more permanent in quality to certain
extent.
".. it is not the Other who, in defining himself
as the Other, establishes the One.
The Other is posed as such by the One in defining
himself as the One.
But if the Other is not to regain the status
of being the One, he must be submissive enough
to accept this alien point of view.
Whence comes this submission in the case of
woman?"
So that is the key question which Beauvoir
is asking over here.
So what is this whole idea of submission when
it comes to women?
So why is it that there is no contest historically
in terms of not accepting itself as the Other
or rather say that we are the One and as opposed
to which man is the Other.
So what is the submission, what is the ontological
quality of the submission, what is the experiential
quality of the submission in the case of women
as Beauvoir asked quite clearly.
"There are, to be sure, other cases in which
a certain category has been able to dominate
another completely for a time.
Very often this privilege depends upon inequality
of numbers" so sometimes it is just purely
mathematical, it is a question of numbers
sometimes.
Some people are more in relation to others
so they have more territorial advantage; they
have more numerical advantage which then spills
over, which then exteneds on to discursive
advantage or political advantage, etc.
So a larger army can vanquish a smaller army
on a numerical basis, more often than not.
"Very often this privilege depends upon inequality
of numbers – the majority imposes its rule
upon the minority or persecutes it.
But women are not a minority..." so if you
take the numerical logic, the more number
harassing or exploiting the lesser number
that wouldn't work in case of women because
it is more or less, equal in terms of number.
"Women are not a minority like the American
Negroes or the Jews;" so there's a difference
made between the women and the American Negros
or the Jews because the Jews are a minority
in terms of numbers.
The women are not a minority in terms of numbers.
So what is it that makes them the Other of
men?
Sometimes unquestionably.
"...there are as many women as men on earth.
Again, the two groups concerned have often
been originally independent; they may have
been formerly unaware of each other’s existence,
or perhaps they recognized each other’s
autonomy.
But a historical event has resulted in the
subjugation of the weaker by the stronger.
The scattering of the Jews, the introduction
of slavery into America, the conquests of
imperialism are examples in point.
In these cases, the oppressed retained at
least the memory of former days; they possessed
in common a past, a tradition, sometimes a
religion or a culture."
So in case of, for instance, colonialism,
there was a time where the colonized and the
colonizers did not know each other.
They were completely autonomous from each
other, different from each other so before
colonialism happened, the colonized natives
had their own traditions, had their own religion,
had their own culture which was then obviously
wiped out with the arrival of colonialism
but then it is possible to produce a past
or at least remember a past before colonialism
where there was some sense of identity which
suffered erasure.
It's the term used in post-colonial studies.
"The parallel drawn by Bebel between women
and the proletariat is valid in that neither
ever formed a minority or a separate collective
unit of mankind.
And instead of a single historical event it
is in both cases a historical development
that explains their status as a class and
accounts for the membership of particular
individuals in that class.
But proletarians have not always existed,
whereas there have always been women."
So even in the case of proletariat and the
upper class we find that, that too came out
of something.
It did not exist from the word God; it didn't
exist from inception.
Some people got richer and some people did
not get so rich and that's how the class divisions
took place and then we have the bourgeois
one of the proletariat as different categories
but there was a time when there were no proletariats.
So proletarians have not always existed whereas
there have always been women.
"They are women in virtue of their anatomy
and physiology."
So since the beginning of human species, since
the beginning of human civilization, women
have always been women in terms of the virtue,
of the anatomy and physiology.
"Throughout history they have always been
subordinated to men, and hence their dependency
is not the result of a historical event or
a social change – it was not something that
occurred."
So it was not occurrence.
So the subjugation of women is not an occurrence
like colonialism.
So colonial army comes and wipes out the natives
and sets up its own civilization, that's an
occurrence of human history.
Slavery is an occurrence in the human history.
Anti-Semitism is an occurrence in the human
history.
So it happened at a certain point of time
in the human history.
Prior to which there were different situations,
prior to which there were different demographic
conditions but when it comes to women, there
has always been women from the very inception
of human civilizations so that occurrence
is not really an occurrence in human history
of female subjugation.
It's not really an occurrence.
There is a key difference between female subjugation
and imperialism, [between] female subjugation
and class struggle as de Beauvoir is very
clearly mapping out.
"The reason why otherness in this case seems
to be an absolute is in part that it lacks
the contingent or incidental nature of historical
facts.
A condition brought about at a certain time
can be abolished at some other time, as the
Negroes of Haiti and others have proved: but
it might seem that natural condition is beyond
the possibility of change."
So something which happened in human history
can also unhappen.
An occurrence which came can also be retaliated
again.
So when the white men had come and taken away
the independence of people some of the parts
of the world, their independence can be regained,
their independence can be fought back because
it happened at one point of time, that can
be undone.
But something which has always been there,
is quite possibly, beyond the possibility
of changes that is de Beauvoir is suggesting.
"In truth, however, the nature of things is
no more immutably given, once for all, than
is historical reality.
If woman seems to be the inessential which
never becomes essential, it is because she
herself fails to bring about this change.
So, it is woman who fails to bring about this
change according to Beauvoir.
Proletarians say ‘We’; Negroes also.
Regarded themselves as subjects, they transform
the bourgeois, the whites, into ‘others’."
So you can turn it the other way around where
proletarians would say that we are the 'we'
and the bourgeois are the Others; Negroes
would say or the black men would say that
we are the 'we' and the white men are the
Others.
So they can turn the table on the whole otherness.
"But women do not say ‘We’, except at
some congress of feminists or similar formal
demonstration; men say ‘women’, and women
use the same word in referring to themselves.
They do not authentically assume a subjective
attitude.
The proletarians have accomplished the revolution
in Russia, the Negroes in Haiti, the Indo-Chinese
are battling for it in Indo-China; but the
women’s effort has never been anything more
than a symbolic agitation.
They have gained only what men have been willing
to grant; they have taken nothing; they have
only received."
So this becomes a critique of women done by
Beauvoir over here.
So she says that no, the proletarians have
accomplished revolution in Russia where the
Tsar was abolished, Tsarism was abolished
and the Bolshevik party came to power which
then became the communist party.
The Negroes in Haiti have done a similar thing.
They have done away with white imperialism
and they gained back their territory.
And the Indo-Chinese, which is obviously the
Vietnam War is being referred over here, are
battling for for Indo-China against imperials,
the American invasion for instance.
But a woman's effort has never been anything
more than a symbolic agitation.
So what de Beauvoir seems to suggest or seems
to want over here is a real agitation rather
than a symbolic agitation so the reality becomes
more important for de Beauvoir and she wants
women to possess a reality, rather than just
a symbolic presence.
They have gained only what men have been willing
to grant them.
So what the men have given them, and granted
them and conferred on them from a position
of privilege, they have [women] just taken
that; they have taken nothing, they have only
received.
So they need to possess power, they need to
take power, they need to appropriate power
that belongs to them.
They haven't done that.
They have just received privileges that men
have given to them.
So that's a very key condition, a very key
difference that de Beauvoir is mapping out
between the woman condition and a class condition
and the race condition which too have problems
of subjugation, harassment, exploitation,
hierarchy, etc.
But there is a fundamental difference in those
conditions and these conditions.
So one is the temporal difference, that those
conditions of colonialism or racism or domination
of race or language happen at a certain moment
of historical time.
So it was an occurrence, once was done and
can be undone.
So it can be retaliated again.
Whereas as a woman's condition has been happening
since the beginning of human civilization
that women have been subjugated.
And secondly the retaliation is real when
it comes to political struggles or race struggles
or ethnicity struggles, etc.
But the retaliation for the women, according
to Beauvoir, is strictly speaking, symbolic
in quality and that needs to change according
to Beauvoir's argument.
So we will stop at this point today and we
will conclude with this text in the lectures
to come.
Thank you for your attention.
