Welcome back to Feminism, Concepts and Theories,
we are now in week six.
As we progress onwards from concepts, theories,
the various waves of feminism, we are now
coming to an exciting juncture in this course.
This week onwards as we take up various kinds
of, ways in which feminist theory takes up
objects of analysis, we will now go back and
forth between theory and praxis as we understand
it, which is theory in practice.
And I find this to be exciting for a variety
of reasons.
Because finally, we can now start looking
at the inner workings of theory, which does
not mean that we are only going to be looking
at practicalities or events on the ground,
or what is otherwise called, what is the use
of feminist theory?
How do we apply this?
So, when I say praxis, it is not about application
knowledge, but about a form of practicing
theory.
How is it that theory now becomes a lens for
us to understand the world as we see it today,
and the ways in which we understand gender
to be a force in this world?
So today, without further ado, let us begin
with the feminist body.
So what is it that we are covering today in
the feminist body?
First, feminist theory is very understanding
of the body.
Why is the body an object of analysis?
Why does it matter to feminist theorists?
What are the ways in which we can break down
this body in feminist understanding?
What are the various kinds of bodies?
If you remember, we had begun in week one
with one of the bases of feminist theory,
which is then later on critiqued, of course,
but which works as a kind of ..mmm…preliminary
understanding of the ways in which biological
sex and cultural gender form a dialectic with
one another.
So we are going to return to that in relation
to feminist theory.
And as ever, like we did last week, we are
also going to go through a whole set of primary
readings to give you an understanding of feel
and texture for theory in life, so to speak.
Some of these readings are from academic journals,
some of them are from popular articles.
So as you can see, theory is not merely the
realm then just of academic hallowed halls
and ivory towers, but you can find instantiation
of it in everyday life in the newspapers,
journals, and everyday structures, and encounters,
and experiences that all of us have.
Let us start then with the very basic question,
why body?
And, it might be fairly obvious to you we
start feminism with this understanding of
woman, how is woman to be distinguished, unless
of course you are taking into account the
body.
So therefore, we are interested in the body,
in feminist theory in relation to Western
philosophies, understanding of the body itself,
and how that then maps on to the category
of woman.
In Western philosophy since Descartes, we
now work with what is common sensically understood
as the body-mind dichotomy.
One has a mind through which one controls
the body.
The body, in such an understanding is an instrument
to be directed.
You remember the fairly popular saying, “I
think, therefore I am,” which begs the question,
does one have a body?
I think therefore, I am.
Therefore I am thinking about myself as having
a body, or, am I a body?
Do I have an embodied understanding of self?
Do I move through the world as if body and
mind are one?
And in such a binary system, what is the status
of a woman's body?
Are there differences in this sort of formulation
of I think, therefore, I am in relation to
quote unquote, “woman's thinking” or “woman's
body.”
Also recall the binaries that we discussed
in relation to discourse analysis or discursive
formations of the woman within which man-woman
work as a dyad.
And in such a dyad, woman is considered to
be closer to body than mind, which is the
realm of man.
Man is always the thinking animal, the one
that has conquered nature, whereas woman,
whereas women's bodies are considered to be
equal to nature.
So full circle.
In Western philosophy itself, you find the
construction of a seemingly universal thinking
mind - feeling body that then maps on to thinking
man and feeling woman.
Therefore, it is of paramount importance that
feminist theory deal with the question of
the body.
Elizabeth Grosz says, for example, women are
somehow more biological, more corporeal, and
more natural than men.
Think, for example, about men's attitude towards
make-up and women, where a large number of
men will always say, well, you know, it just
looks artificial, you look so much better
without make-up.
As if in many ways, the closer you are to
your natural self, the more authentic you
are to this unspoiled idea of nature that
can be enjoyed by man.
So more biological, more corporeal, more natural
than men.
Hence, corporeality or the act of having a
body becomes an important set of ideas to
confront and engage with, for feminist theory.
And, we are therefore going to trace some
parts of this body in feminist history, feminist
theory, remembering throughout the process,
that this process itself is fraught and multiple.
You are aware of some of this, right?
We already went through these questions with
different waves of feminist theory, whereas
in every wave we will see splinter feminisms.
You see one set of ideas, but they are not
necessarily coherent, they are not necessarily
homogenous, there are ways in which there
are internal struggles in relation to other
things happening in the world.
Similarly, the ways in which theorization
about the body moves through these waves of
feminism will also be fraught and multiple.
Therefore, let me briefly state for common
understanding our goals for this week's set
of discussions on the feminist body:
One, we are going to try and see where and
when is it that the body appears and disappears?
In other words, feminist theory does not have
a mandate to say, body, let us talk about
it.
The body comes and goes as part of the larger
understanding of what it means at particular
times and places to be a woman in the world.
Therefore, I am speaking about appearing and
disappearing, at what times is it more important,
at what times is it less important?
And these things are also clues into trying
to figure out how women are navigating this
power binary between man and woman.
After this, we are going to try and draw a
very modest typology, which is, what kinds
of bodies are we talking about or what kind
of body?
Are there particular ways in which we can
divide up the form of body that we are analysing,
just for analytical ease, more than for saying
this is the only kind of body worth studying.
That is why I am emphasizing that this is
a modest typology, I am not going to cover
all the kinds of bodies there are, I am only
offering kinds of bodies as forms of analysis
to give you an idea of how to do this.
So it is more methodological than anything
else.
And this last question, which we may or may
not fully answer in these sets of sessions,
which is, what happens now?
What are the implications of particular kinds
of bodily knowledge for feminist theory?
Where do we go from here?
And this is as much an open question as an
experimental one.
It is an invitation to look at the kinds of
material around us to imagine possibilities
for the body in feminist theory, and otherwise.
So, without further ado, let us dive right
in.
Let us start at a sort of beginning, not the
very beginning, but kind of.
What is the body for first-wave feminists?
Now remember, first-wave feminism with its
goals of equality, and what kind of equality?
Equality like men, for instance, or equality
as women, with women's values also being valuable
in the public sphere.
So we are looking at either something that
says women should have equal voting rights
because they are as intelligent as men.
So in the equality paradigm, women being equal
to men, just like men, with men being the
standard, or women should get voting rights
in order that they can raise good children,
in which case, we are still looking at the
disavowal of the notion by these very feminist
that women are merely decorative items in
society or meant to entice men in order that
marriage can secure for them future security
and prosperity.
And therefore, all kinds of feminists wanted
to move away from the notion of having embodiment
itself of being womanly in a particular mode
that is best identified with the body.
Therefore, we see efforts to continually disengage
the beautiful body from the thinking mind.
Women wanted to be thinking women in order
to be taken seriously.
See, for example, Mary Wollstonecraft, speaking
about the ways in which beauty binds women
to particular kinds of practices, “to preserve
personal beauty, woman's glory.
The limbs and faculties are cramped with worse
than Chinese bands, and the sedentary life
which they are condemned to live, whilst boys
frolic in the open air, weakens the muscles.
Artificial notions of beauty and false descriptions
of sensibility have been early entangled with
her motives of action.”
Look at the kind of picture that Wollstonecraft
is drawing that sedentary life for women,
makes them slow, makes them not capable and
therefore, this woman's glory of personal
beauty, cramps their faculties worse than
Chinese bands.
So leave alone the orientalism in this statement,
also pay attention to the fact that she is
speaking about particular kinds of privileged,
mostly white women, and not African-American
slaves.
So here is an early example of the disavowal
of body with first-wave feminism.
And by disavowal, I do not mean that there
is a hatred or a self-loathing, but there
is an urgency to present oneself as mind rather
than body as equality in the paradigms that
we have already studied.
It is also very exciting for me to see everything
that we have studied before coming together
in multiple ways in what we are going to study
henceforth.
In the 19th century, there is also the kind
of focus, however, by feminists on ways in
which the state tries to control women.
This is also got to do with the kind of interest
prevalent in society in demographics.
The idea of population control, the idea of
disease, the idea of making sure that populations
can be governed in a fashion which keeps them
safe, that controls for rates of mortality
in relation to the spread of disease in relation
to public health.
So, for example, the Contagious Diseases Act
“permitted women to be forcibly examined
for venereal diseases,” and the campaign
led by Josephine Butler militated against
this and argued that women were victims of
male and medical appropriation of their bodies,
thereby leading feminist attention to the
sexual reproductive body.
Victims of this kind of action were often
lower class, working class women who might
also be sex workers.
And therefore, they were forcibly subjected
to medical appropriation and public health
campaigns that suggested that they were corrupt
and corrupt for society and had to be managed
and had to be controlled.
Their bodies being overtly sexual were also
seen as suspicious bodies capable of bleeding
over in their excess into society and corrupting
it through disease.
In the 18th and 19th century, there are also
other references to the raced and classed
body.
So already you see that there are fine tunings
in the ways in which the body is being considered
in feminist theory, depending on who is speaking.
So for example, this is Sojourner Truth.
You have become familiar with her.
We did read something like this in relation
to her declaration that “Ain’t I a woman,”
and she says, “I have as much muscle as
any man, can do as much work as any man…
ploughed, planted, … gathered into barns.
And ain’t I a woman?”
Here she is resolutely insisting on her embodiment
that she has a body and to pay attention to
the capacities of that body.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in another mode argues,
“the prejudice against colour of which we
hear so much is no stronger than that against
sex.”
Here, Cady Stanton is calling attention to
the colour of the racialized body in equivalence
with the sex of the female body.
So colour as visible marked entity, as a bodily
entity, is equivalent in her understanding
to sex as a marked entity that anybody can
see that this is a woman.
We will not talk here, of course, about the
race blindness of this kind of declaration,
but to analyse it for what it is, which is
the understanding that femaleness is an embodied
trait.
Further she goes on to say, “the negro’s
skin and the woman’s sex are both prima
facie evidence that they were intended to
be in subjection to the white Saxon man.”
Other concerns during this time for women's
bodies were multiple; they included various
kinds of vulnerability in relation to mortality
rates, disease and childbirth.
And in relation to eugenics where a discourse
was in circulation that women were preservers
of racial purity, and therefore the question
of who could procreate and raise children?
What were the kinds of appropriate women who
would be allowed to have children was very
much part of public discourse, very-very problematically.
There were many instances of forced sterilization
in case women were purported to be inappropriate
carriers of race.
And additionally, birth control to prevent
and abet reproduction, which was subject to
intense debates as to who is it that had access
to birth control in the first place.
Broadly after sketching these sets of concerns,
let us now move forward to look at one of
the more seminal texts of the time, 1949,
The Second Sex.
So we have briefly referred to Second Sex
as being part of second-wave feminism or being
a precursor to second-wave feminism with its
attention to the ways in which gender works
and circulates through powerful discourses
about women.
Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex was a remarkably
influential text during this time, where she
argues, “to be present in the world implies
strictly that there exists a body which is
at once a material thing in the world and
a point of view towards the world.”
Pay attention to what that means, to be present
in the world, there is a body through which
one is present, but at the same time the body
is also a point of view towards the world.
One can only see the world in particular fashion,
depending on the kind of body one has and
the kind of body one has is not merely biological
fact, it is also a culturally embodied thing
in the world.
Therefore, second sex calls attention to this
relationship between body and self.
So one wonders if then this might be seen
as renewing this kind of contract between
mind and body I think, therefore, I am, so
what do I think of my body?
Can I think through it to get to the world?
And Simone de Beauvoir does not quite mean
exactly that.
Let us go on to read a few excerpts from the
text and then we will try and work through
what are the various kinds of modalities through
which she is making her arguments.
In the introduction, she writes, “I hesitated
a long time before writing a book on woman.
The subject is irritating, especially for
women; and it is not new.
Enough ink has flowed over the quarrel about
feminism; it is now almost over:..” well,
little did she know we are still talking about
it.
“let’s not talk about it anymore.
Yet it is still being talked about.
And the volumes of idiocies churned out over
this past century do not seem to have clarified
the problem.
Besides, is there a problem?
And what is it?
Are there even women?
True, the theory of the eternal feminine still
has its followers; they whisper, “Even in
Russia, women are still very much women”;
but other well informed people, --- and also
at times those same ones --- lament, “Woman
is losing herself, woman is lost.”
It is hard to know any longer if women still
exist, if they will always exist, if there
should be women at all, what place they hold
in this world, what place they should hold.”
I really like this excerpt because I think
it captures one of the quandaries of doing
this sort of work, which we will broadly call
deconstruction for now.
Every time we start looking into ideas about
how is it that something like womanhood is
secured bodily, physiologically, physically,
psychically, etc., etc.
One also begins to want something solid to
hold on to as to what is it that is certain
anymore?
Simone de Beauvoir is capturing precisely
that kind of sentiment in the second-wave.
““Where are the women?” asked a short-lived
magazine recently.”
She continues, “But first, what is a woman?
“Tota mulier in utero; she is a womb,”
some say,” meaning women reproduce.
Besides that, nothing else can be known about
them.
“Yet speaking of certain women, the experts
proclaim, ““They are not women,” even
though they have a uterus like the others.”
So clearly, the bodily fact of having a uterus
is not enough, you still have to do more.
“Everyone agrees there our females in the
human species,” yes, and yet, “today,
as in the past, they make up about half of
humanity; and yet we are told that “femininity
is in jeopardy”; we are urged, “Be women,
stay women, become women.”
So not every female human being is necessarily
a woman.”
Pay attention.
…female human being is not necessarily a
woman.
See glimpses of the sex, gender framework
already?
“She must take part in this mysterious and
endangered reality known as femininity.
Is femininity secreted by the ovaries?
Is it bodily?
Is it enshrined in a Platonic heaven?
Is a frilly petticoat enough to bring it down
to earth?
Although some women zealously strive to embody
it, the model has never been patented.”
Here, she is quite mischievously, gesturing
to the fact that somehow everybody seems to
keep telling everybody else that one has to
be a woman sufficiently enough but nobody
knows exactly what this model encompasses.
Levi-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 a man's ability
to view biological relations as series of
contrasts,” biological relations as a series
of contrasts.
Remember the duality that we keep invoking,
keep that in mind.
“[D]uality, 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.
These phenomena would be incomprehensible
if in fact human society was simply a Mitsein
or fellowship based on solidarity and friendliness.
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.
“
This may seem very opaque, but this is very
important.
Let us try again.
So, in order to make her argument, Simone
de Beauvoir is reading other philosophers
and the anthropologist Levi Strauss, who at
the end of a profound work on forms of primitive
society says, “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 contrast.”
Man is coming to consciousness is marked by
this capacity to distinguish oppositions and
duality in society.
And this Levi Strauss is doing by looking
at a variety of texts from around the world.
Simone de Beauvoir is additionally adding.
She says, well, surely this cannot be explained
if we look at these dualities as friendships.
I mean, sure, man has a capacity to look at
duality, but is he looking at these dualities
as things that can exist together, that are
friendly with one another, that have fellowship
with one another, so that we can all form
this universal pact of love and peace?
Surely not.
Things become clear, if following Hegel, we
find in consciousness itself a fundamental
hostility, meaning in order to be conscious,
you have to embrace a fundamental hostility
and hostility over here, read it loosely,
read it as the fact of opposing oneself to
something else, I am that which that is not
and ideally, I have to be better, or I am
that which that is not, and if I am not as
good as that I need to be better.
And this is the driving force of consciousness,
according to Simone de Beauvoir, reading Levi
Strauss, and Hegel.
“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.”
So I am the subject, the human, that, is the
object.
And in suggesting this, Simone de Beauvoir
wants us to pay attention to how this maps
onto the question of man and woman.
The ways in which man is set up as mind, woman
is set up as nature and man's capacity to
be man depends on objectifying and opposing
himself to woman who is set up as that which
is not as good as man.
She continues.
“Woman?
Very simple, say those who like simple answers.
She is a womb, an ovary; she is a female.
This word is enough to define her,” as if
the word itself has meaning prior to itself.
“From a man's mouth, the epithet female
sounds like an insult; but he, not ashamed
of his animality, is proud to hear, he's a
male.
The term “female” is pejorative not because
it roots woman in nature but because it confines
her in her sex, and if this sex, even in an
innocent animal, seems despicable and an enemy
to man, it is obviously because of the disquieting
hostility woman triggers in him.”
Pay attention to where is it that the author
roots this hostility.
She says that it is because man in many ways
is closer to culture, and woman to nature.
Therefore, woman has sex, she is just a basic
sexual being.
She has an identity because of her sexuality
as a woman, because of her capacity to reproduce,
just like everybody else in nature.
“Nevertheless, he wants to find a justification
in biology for this feeling.
The word “female” evokes a saraband of
images.
An enormous round egg snatching and castrating
the agile sperm; monstrous and stuffed, the
queen termite reigning over the servile males;
the praying mantis and the spider, gorged
on love, crushing their partners and gobbling
them up; the dog in heat running through back
alleys, leaving perverse smells in her wake;
the monkey showing herself off brazenly, sneaking
away with flirtatious hypocrisy.
And the most splendid wildcats, the tigress,
lioness, and panther, lie down slavishly under
the male’s imperial embrace, inert, impatient,
shrewd, stupid, insensitive, lewd, fears and
humiliated.”
Now, do not read this as mere evidence.
Read it the way the author means it, which
is to evoke a set of images that draw this
clear distinction between culture and nature.
And how is it that females are part of the
nature side of the binary, and man part of
the culture side?
And once that binary becomes clearer, think
then also as to how the male side of the spectrum
is constantly both drawn to, as well as scared
by this nature side of the binary.
“Man projects all females at once onto woman.”
You are just like all other women, or if you
have heard the compliment given by some men,
you are not like women at all, you just not
like any other woman, as if that is a compliment.
“And the fact is that she is a female.
But if one wants to stop thinking in commonplaces,
two questions arise.
What does the female represent in the animal
kingdom?
And what unique kind of female is realized
in a woman?”
“Males and females are two types of individuals
who are differentiated within one species
for the purposes of reproduction; they can
be defined only correlatively.
But it has to be pointed out first that the
very meaning of division of the species into
two sexes is not clear.”
What is she saying here?
She says, man projects all females at once
onto woman.
However, two related questions.
What is it that the female represents in the
animal kingdom, if you say that women are
close to nature?
And secondly, what unique kind of female is
realized in woman?
How do you make these continuous assertions?
And then how do you try and understand the
female body within these assertions?
Then she is making the very interesting argument
that male and female are two types of individuals
who can only be defined in relation to one
another, in relation to each of their reproductive
functions, none of which makes sense without
the other.
But to begin with, the division of the species
into two sexes itself is not very clear.
She is in fact gesturing to the arbitrariness
of this kind of division.
“It does not occur universally in nature.”
For anybody who keeps saying that male and
female, these are natural biological divisions,
pay attention.
“In one-celled animals, infusorians, amoebas,
bacilli, and so on, multiplication is fundamentally
distinct from sexuality, with cells dividing
and subdividing individually.
For some metazoans, reproduction occurs by
schizogenesis, that is dividing the individual
whose origin is also asexual, or by blastogenesis,
that is dividing the individual itself produced
by a sexual phenomenon.
The phenomenon of budding or segmentation
observed in freshwater hydras, coelenterates,
sponges, worms, and tunicates are well-known
examples.
In parthenogenesis, the virgin egg develops
in embryonic form without male intervention.”
Lest you think you walked into the wrong class,
this is not biology.
But Simone de Beauvoir is bringing together
all these forms of evidence to suggest that
what we understand about sexuality itself
as a given, as a natural processes, as always
defined by male and female, are all a large
set of discursive myths.
And by myth, we are not saying false, we are
saying that these are arrangements that are
arbitrary, they do not necessarily mean as
much as you think they do.
“Opinions about the respective roles of
the two sexes have varied greatly; they were
initially devoid of any scientific basis and
only reflected social myths.
It was thought for a long time, and is still
thought in some primitive societies based
on matrilineal filiation, that the father
has no part in the child's conception: ancestral
larvae were supposed to infiltrate the womb
in the form of living germs.
With the advent of patriarchy, the male resolutely
claimed his posterity; the mother had to be
granted a role in procreation even though
she merely carried and fattened the living
seed: the father alone was the creator.
Aristotle imagined that the fetus was produced
by the meeting of the sperm and the menses:
in this symbiosis, woman just provided passive
material, while the male principle is strength,
activity, movement, and life.”
Look how beautifully she gathers different
kinds of material to make this argument not
just of arbitrariness but to show that in
the process of arbitrary assignment how is
it that power accrues to the male and passivity
to the female, thereby bringing us back full
circle to what we began with in the first
lecture.
“Gender thus is an analytical category that
refers to the social organization of the relation
between the sexes.”
It “is used to designate psychological,
social and cultural aspects of maleness and
femaleness…” and this is where Simone
de Beauvoir also comes in… “although even
biological sex as a natural kind is now questioned
by many theorists.”
Nancy Potter is writing in 2001.
1949, Simone de Beauvoir is not making an
argument for biological sex being natural.
In fact, she is suggesting that the very fact
of naming biological sex itself as male and
female is tremendously arbitrary and already
shot through with patriarchal power.
This would be a good moment to take a break,
now that we have gone through the history
of the feminist body in western feminist theory
and taken you through a short reading of Simone
de Beauvoir.
Take a quick break and come back to the second
part of the series of discussions where we
will speak about body and beauty.
