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Rousseau's Phallocratic Ends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Sarah Kofman  and
Mara Dukats
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Abstract

Kofman traces Rousseau's argument that women's role as mothers requires the subordination of women to men, and the companion argument that women's lust is a threat to the (male) social order, which also justifies the confinement of women within the home. She then relates the claim that women so confined exert a power of their own to Rousseau's erotic obsession with dominant, but maternal, women. Thus, the “Nature” to which Rousseau appeals is seen to be both a reflection of his own specific nature and representative of all phallocratic discourse in its defense of male domination.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 3 , Issue 3: Special Issue: French Feminist Philosophy , Winter 1988 , pp. 123 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Hypatia, Inc.

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References

Notes

1 “I was born disabled and sickly; I cost my mother her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes.”Confessions, éd. Livre de Poche, t. I, p. 8. This and all other translations of Rousseau are my own—M.D.

2 On the death of Julie's mother he writes in La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part III, Letter VI: “a loss which cannot be restored and for which one never finds consolation once one has been able to reproach oneself for it.” And in Emile, Book I: “Maternal solicitude cannot be supplied.”

3 See S. Kofman, Le Respect des femmes, Galilée, 1980.

4 See, for example, Lettre à d'Alembert, “At this very instant the short-lived philosophy that is born and dies in the corner of a great city, this philosophy that seeks to suppress the cry of Nature and the unanimous voice of humankind is going to rise up against me.”[“à l'instant va sélever contre moi, cette philosophie d'un jour … (Garnier-Flammarion p. 168)], and further: “Thus it was willed by nature, it is a crime to suppress her voice”[“Ainsi l'a voulu la Nature, … (p. 171)].

5 Emile, éd. Garnier-Flammarion, p. 48. All page numbers given in this text for Emile refer to the Garnier-Flammarion edition. Translations are my own—M.D.

6 “Sur les femmes” in Oeuvres complètes, Pléiade, t. II, p. 1255.

7 One could find this contrast between “major” and “minor” texts, between texts of “youth” and those of “maturity” in other philosophers. This is the case with Auguste Comte, another phallocrat, whose early letter to Valet, dating from Sept. 24, 1819, espouses a position which will later be that of his adversary, John Stuart Mill. See S. Kofman: Aberrations, le devenir-femme d'A. Comte (Aubier-Flammarion p. 230 and following).

8 See Kofman, Le Respect des femmes, Galilée, 1980.

9 la Nouvelle Héloïse, Part IV, Letter X.

10 The Rousseauistic description is the opposite of that of Freud for whom libido is essentially “masculine.” See Kofman, The Enigma of Woman, Cornell University Press, 1985. Despite this difference, both appeal to the same “Nature” to justify the sexual subjugation of women, the essential point of the whole argument.

11 Emile, p. 470–71. See also La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part II, Letter XVIII, where Julie writes to Saint-Preux about the married woman: “She not only invested her faith, but alienated her freedom. (…) It is not enough to be honest, it is necessary that she be honored; it is not enough to do only what is good, it is necessary that she refrain from doing anything that isn't approved. A virtuous woman must not only merit the esteem of her husband, but obtain it. If he blames her, she is blameful: and if she were to be innocent, she is wrong as soon as she is suspect—for appearance itself counts as one of her duties.”

12 Lucrèce, who preferred death to the loss of honor, is quoted by Rousseau as being among the heroines comparable and superior to male heros. (See “Sur les femmes” and La Mort de Lucrèce, O.C., II).

13 Lettre à d'Alembert, éd. Gamier-Flammarion, p. 246.

14 See Nancy Holland's “Introduction,”Hypatia, this issue, for an explanation of this reference to “cauldron” logic (tr.).

15 La Mort de Lucrèce

16 La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part IV, Letter X.

17 It would be interesting and very enlightening to compare Rousseau's discourse on decency with that of Montesquieu in L'Esprit des lois (Books XVI, X, XI, XX). In particular, one would find clarification for the allusion to warm countries where climate renders feminine sexual avidity fearsome. Montesquieu overtly grounds decency and the domestic confinement of women in the sexual danger that these represent for men in warm countries. In contrast, where climate is temperate, it is unnecessary to confine women. Men can “communicate” with them for the pleasure and “entertainment” of both men and women.

18 See De l'intérêt de la psychanalyse; in Aberrations, le devenir-femme d’ A. Comte (Aubier-Flammarion, 1978) Kofman offers a detailed analysis of the possible relationships between a philosopher's delirium and his philosophical system.

19 Emile, Book V.

20 La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part IV, Letter X.

21 Confessions, Book XII.

22 for Mlle Lambercier, see Book I and L'Ebauche des Confessions, 13. For Mlle Goton, Book I. For Mme Basile, Book II.

23 Letter of October 15, 1757.

24 For an explanation of Kofman's use of ‘feminism’ in this passage, see Nancy Holland's “Introduction,”Hypatia, this issue (tr.).

25 La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part V, Letter III.