Abstract

Women's alienation seems to cling to their bodies like destiny. But what is a woman? An absurd question if ever there was one, since a man's virility seems so self‐evident that it would never occur to him to wonder what makes him a man. As a man, he is both the positive and the neuter term representing all humanity, while doubt is permitted in the case of woman, the negative pole whose elusive “femininity” we continue to pursue. In fact, the problem comes from elsewhere because “Only the mediation of another can constitute an individual as an Other.” But what is the Other? This is a question we have not gotten beyond. The absolute Other might be the Black woman encountered in Africa, whom Simone de Beauvoir mentions in Letters to Nelson Algren.