xxii INTRODUCTION INT且ODUCTION xxiii with the world,which he believes he apprehends objectively,whereas as that of Granet on Chinese thought and those of Dumezil on the he regards the body of woman as a hindrance,a prison,weighed down East Indies and Rome.The feminine element was at first no more by everything peculiar to it."The female is a female by virtue of a involved in such pairs as Varuna-Mitra,Uranus-Zeus,Sun-Moon,and certain lack of qualitics,"said Aristotle;"we should regard the female Day-Night than it was in the contrasts between Good and Evil,lucky nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness."And St.Thomas for and unlucky auspices,right and left,God and Lucifer.Otherness is a his part pronounced woman to be an "imperfect man,"an "inci- fundamental category of human thought. dental"being.This is symbolized in Genesis where Eve is depicted as Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at made from what Bossuet called"a supernumerary bone"of Adam. once setting up the Other over against itself.If three travelers chance Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but to occupy the same compartment,that is enough to make vaguely as relative to him;she is not regarded as an autonomous being.Miche- hostile "others"out of all the rest of the passengers on the train.In let writes:"Woman,the relative bcing..."And Benda is most small-town eyes all persons not belonging to the village are"strangers" positive in his Rapport d'Uriel:"The body of man makes sense in it. and suspect;to the native of a country all who inhabit other countries self quite apart from that of woman,whereas the latter scems want- are "foreigners";Jews are"different"for the anti-Semite,Negroes are ing in significance by itself....Man can think of himself without "inferior"for American racists,aborigines are "natives"for colonists, woman.She cannot think of herself without man."And she is simply proletarians are the "lower class"for the privileged. what man decrees;thus she is called "the sex,"by which is meant Levi-Strauss,at the end of a profound work on the various forms of that she appears essentially to the male as a sexual-being.For him she primitive societies,reaches the following conclusion:"Passage from is sex-absolute sex,no less.She is defined and differentiated with the state of Nature to the state of Culture is marked by man's ability reference to man and not he with reference to her;she is the inci- to view biological relations as a series of contrasts;duality,alternation, 出 dental,the inessential as opposed to the essential.He is the Subject, opposition,and symmetry,whether under definite or vague forms, he is the Absolute-she is the Other." constitute not so much phenomena to be explained as fundamental The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. and immediately given data of social reality."*These phenomena In the most primitive societies,in the most ancient mythologies,one would be incomprehensible if in fact human society were simply a finds the expression of a duality-that of the Self and the Other.This Mitsein or fellowship based on solidarity and-friendliness.Things be- duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes;it was come clear,on the contrary,if,following Hegel,we find in conscious- not dependent upon any empirical facts.It is revealed in such works ness itself a fundamental hostility toward every other consciousness; aE.Levinas expresses this idea most exphcitly in his essay Temps et I'Autre. the subject can be posed only in being opposed-he sets himself up "Is there not a case in which othemess,altenty [alterite unquestionably marks the as the essential,as opposed to the other,the inessential,the object. nature of a bcing.as its essence,an instance of otherness not consisting purely and But the other consciousness,the other ego,sets up a reciprocal simply in the opposition of two specics of the same genus?I think that the fem- claim.The native traveling abroad is shocked to find himself in turn inine represents the contrary in its absolute sense,this contranness being in uo wise affected by any relation betwcen it and its corrclative and thus remaining regarded as a "stranger"by the natives of neighboring countries.As a absolutely other.Sex is not a ccrtain specific difference...no more is the sexual matter of fact,wars,festivals,trading,treaties,and contests among difference a mere contradiction....Nor docs this difference lie in the duality tribes,nations,and classes tend to deprive the concept Other of its of two complementary terms,for two complementary terms imply a pre-existing whole., .Otherness reaches its full flowering in the feminine,a term of the absolute sense and to make manifest its relativity;willy-nilly,indi- same rank as consciousness but of opposite meaning." viduals and groups are forced to realize the reciprocity of their rela I suppose that Levinas does not forget that woman,too,is aware of her own tions.How is it,then,that this reciprocity has not been recognized consciousness,or ego.But it is striking that he deliberatcly takes a man's point of view,disregarding the reciprocity of subject and object.When he writes that *See C.Levi-Strauss:Les Structures dlementaires de la parente.My thanks are woman is mystery,he implies that she is mystery for man.Thus his description, due to C.Levi-Strauss for his kindness in furnishing me with the proofs of his which is intended to be objective,is in fact an assertion of masculinc puivilege. work,which,among others,I have used liberally in Part II