Who may study the body as situation Beauvoir, Moi and Darwin

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Who may study the body as situation? -
Beauvoir, Moi and Darwin

• Tone Bleie Anna Rotkirch
• University of Tromsö and Population Research
  Institute, Väestöliitto

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Classics of womens studies
Charles Darwin Simone de Beauvoir Toril Moi
1809-1882 1908-1986 1953- 100 year
anniversary!
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On sex, gender and the body
Moi What is a Woman? 1999 Sex, Gender and the
Body (2005, student ed of WW)
Darwin The Descent of Man and Selection in
Relation to Sex, 1871
Beauvoir The Second Sex, 1949
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Structure of talk

• i. What do de Beauvoir and Moi say about Darwin
  and the biological sciences?
• ii. How is this related to their epistemological
  claim about how to study the gendered, situated
  body?
• iii. How is this reflected in their understanding
  of biology and reproduction of mind/body
  dualism?

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Darwinian sexual selection

• SS is a special type of natural selection, where
  rivals and mates constitute the selection
  pressures
• consists of intrasexual competition for mates and
  heterosexual mate choice
• acts on physiology, sexual dimorphism, gendered
  psychological traits, etc
• In most species, females are choosier than males

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i. Darwin doubly rejected
But normally she does not seek to affirm her
individuality she is not hostile to males or to
other females and shows little combative
instinct. In spite of Darwins theory of
election, now much disputed, she accepts without
discrimination whatever male at hand (SS
p.55).
Nothing!
Moi What is a Woman? 1999)
Beauvoir The Second Sex, 1949, p 55
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The Second Sex, part I

• I Destiny
• Chapter 1 Biology
• what does the female denote in the animal
  kingdom? And what particular kind of female is
  manifest in woman?
• variety of reproductive systems in nature
• gamete differences, of the greatest interest
  (Moi Beauvoir adopts an ironic strategy)
• In mammals, the female organism is wholly
  adapted for and subservient to maternity, while
  sexual initiative is the prerogative of the male.
  The female is the victim of the species.

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ii. The body is a situation

• In the perspective I am adopting- that of
  Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty - if the body
  is not a thing, it is a situation it is our
  grasp upon the world and the outline of our
  projects. . It is not the body-object described
  by the biologist that actually exists, but the
  living body of the subject (Beauvoir)
• every single genders physical capacity
  acquires meaning in a cultural and historical
  context Lived experience is sedimented over
  time through my interactions with the world
  (Moi, 91, 96).

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The ambigous, double nature of the body

• Biology is important, critique of constructionism
  and postmodernism, but
• Humans are not a natural species, but a
  historical idea (Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Moi)
• The second nature of habits, culture and
  customs
• This claim sounds like secular creationism and
  is misleading from the viewpoint of current
  cognitive and biological research

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iii. What is biology for B and M?

• Once we adopt the human perspective,
  interpreting the body on a basis of existence,
  biology becomes an abstract science whenever the
  physiological fact (for instance, muscular
  inferiority) takes on meaning, this meaning is at
  once seen as dependent on a whole context
  (Beauvoir)
• biology or anatomy were not the basis of the
  distinction between the sexes biology or
  other sciences of the body (Moi, VÄK 74, 91,
  emphases added)
• biology physiology, esp reproductive physiology
• eg brain and brain/mind interaction excluded

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Conclusions
Sexual selection Multidisciplinary curiosity,
Critique of intuitive evolutionary
postmod. understanding
constructionism