Gender and the Abject in Sartre — Page 10:
46 Like the abject, the slimy is essentially ambiguous, "[une] substance entre deux états" (L'être 699), a substance between solid and liquid matter. The encounter of for-itself and in-itself is an encounter between masculinized mind (liquid) and feminized and sexualized[17]Cf. again the animal imagery ("ses ventouses" [suction cups], "il [le visqueux] s'accroche comme une sangsue;" <em>L'être</em> 701). matter (solid). The ensuing matter, the viscous or slimy, as well is feminized in L'être et le néant: "c'est une activité molle, baveuse et feminine d'aspiration" (700), a soft, yielding, feminine sucking, or "[la] [r]évanche douceâtre et féminine [de l'En-soi]" (701); it is "comme l'étalement, le raplatissement des seins un peu mûrs d'une femme qui s'étend sur son dos" (699). (The "ripe" breasts of a woman are of course those of the threatening, engulfing mother.) Whereas the masculinized pour-soi attempts to absorb and possess the feminized en-soi, the slimy resists this project of assimilation and turns the tables on the for-itself, in turn appropriating it. The clear distinction between the in-itself and the for-itself, the clear delineation of classificatory boundaries, is thus impossible to maintain. Abjection sets in.
47 In this context, it is again interesting to compare the reaction to the viscous — which is ultimately the reaction to abjection and the threat of maternal engulfment and sexuality — to Sartre's description (also in L'être et le néant) of sexual desire, which is associated with fear, the fear of the erasure of the rational, conscious ego, and "une douceur lourde et pâteuse" (457). Sexual desire, due to the threat it poses to consciousness of being invaded, submerged by the fluvial facticity of the en-soi (L'être 457) (as opposed to the "dry" characteristics of hunger), has to be subdued, repressed.
48 As we have seen, in spite of the dualistic rigidity of Sartre's work, one part of the opposition actually represents the negativized and repressed part of the self, which has been pro- and ab-jected outward. The qualities of the slimy, for instance, can be read, in a manner reminiscent of Theweleit's analysis of the psychological constitution of the proto-fascist Freikorps members and their "projection" outward of feminized libidinal drives, as a projection outward of the negativized, and therefore repressed, internal qualities of the self. However, in contrast to a Hegelian recognition of the self in the other and an ensuing reconciliation, in Sartre's dualistic ontology, mutual influence or exchange, intersubjectivity in Jessica Benjamin's sense, does not take place: "Les subjectivités demeurent hors d'atteinte et radicalement séparés" (L'être 498). In Huis clos, Manser observes, "all three characters are in hell precisely because they are prevented by their own choices from establishing any proper relations with those around them" (98). The inability to form object relations, the fear of social interpenetration and mixing, is also one of the dominant features of the fascist psychological constitution as analyzed by Theweleit.
49 The result of Sartre's fear of the other and of the antithetical rigidity that ensues from it, the result of the fight for the subject position at the expense of the other's reduction to an object, is isolation. The pattern of domination prevalent in patriarchal society "leaves the self encapsulated in a closed system" (J. Benjamin 67). For Sartre the problem does not consist in realizing human freedom in the world, but on defending it from the world, when he writes in La nausée for example:
Le voilà encore qui me regarde. Cette fois il va me parler, je me sens tout raide. Ce n'est pas de la sympathie qu'il y a entre nous: nous sommes pareils, voilà. Il est seul comme moi, mais plus enfoncé que moi dans la solitude. Il doit attendre sa Nausée ou quelque chose de ce genre. Il y a donc à présent des gens qui me reconnaissent, qui pensent, après m'avoir dévisagé: "Celui-là est des nôtres." Eh bien? Que veut-il? Il doit bien savoir que nous ne pouvons rien l'un pour l'autre. Les familles sont dans leurs maisons, au milieu de leurs souvenirs. Et nous voici, deux épaves sans mémoire. S'il se levait tout d'un coup, s'il m'adressait la parole, je sauterais en l'air. (97)
In Sartre, the subject's destiny is solitary, absolute freedom: "Autrui est par principe l'insaississable: il me fuit quand je le cherche et me possède quand je le fuis" (L'être 479). Human solidarity and identification with the other in Albert Camus' sense cannot be realized in Sartre's system of thought.
50 Here it becomes clear that the universal responsibility that Sartre advocates, "l'universalité de l'homme," (L'Existentialisme 70, 74) in fact only consists of a fending off of the others' threat to one's own subjectivity (the threat of engulfment by the Other), an absorption instead of others' subject positions, and an imposition of one's own choice on them: "Tout ce qui vaut pour moi vaut pour autrui" (L'être 431). In Les mouches, Orestes assimilates, appropriates Electra's, the Other's, freedom. His existentialist project of recovering himself is, ultimately, a project of absorbing the Other. Since human solidarity and "fraternity" are unachievable, Orestes remains free, but alone. At the end of the play, he again leaves Argos.