Young man, there's no need to feel down
I.
The first text that French philosopher Gilles Deleuze ever published, in the autumn of 1945, when still a 20-year old student, was a contribution towards a gendered philosophy of the other entitled 'Description of Women'.
Although he later renounced the piece - as he did other writings prior to 1953 - it has now been re-published with the agreement of his wife and daughter, in order to counter the unauthorised (and sometimes error-strewn) versions already in circulation. An English translation, by Ames Hodges, can be found in Letters and Other Texts, the third and final volume of posthumous pieces, edited by David Lapoujade, (Semiotext(e), 2020). Page numbers given below refer to this edition.
II.
This amusing (sometimes confusing) work opens in agreement with Sartre that Heidegger was mistaken to conceive of Dasein in asexual terms; a philosophical insufficiency that makes the youthful Deleuze uneasy. Why that should be, I don't know. But one imagines that Deleuze, like many young Frenchmen, found it difficult not to view everything through the prism of sex, including human reality or being, and would naturally, therefore, think it utterly monstrous to conceive of an asexual world.
Deleuze wants gender to be marked in both the lover and the beloved and for it to be essentially distinct in each; not for the sexual identity of the latter to merely be a pale reflection of that of the former: "Phenomenology must be of the loved one" [254], which I think means that the loved one should not be thought of as merely another type of subject, but philosophically acknowledged in their otherness as those who express the possibility of an entirely different and external world.
And how does this relate to the question of women? Well, according to Deleuze, "the description of women cannot be made without reference to the male-Other" [255]. But this male-Other is absolutely not to be confused with that seductive being who wears makeup and torments tender young men, such as himself:
"You could search in vain for the expression of an absent external world on the face of this woman. In her, all is presence. The woman expresses no possible world; or rather the possible that she expresses is not an external world, it is herself." [255]
At best, this self-expressive woman acts as an intermediary beween "the pure object that expresses nothing and the male-Other, who expresses something other than himself, an external world" [255].
I'm not sure if I entirely understand what Deleuze is saying here - and, to be honest, I kind of like the sound of the woman with her enormous presence who possibilizes herself in the "overflowing triumph of flesh" [256]. I think she secretly thrills Deleuze as well; why else would he quote from Jean Giono's Le Chant du monde about the blood-tingling appeal of a female body?
Deleuze might pretend that what really turns him on is the paradoxical fact that "the more she plunges into materiality" [256], the more this woman becomes immaterial and is returned to the being she is and its possibility of expression, but I suspect he's still thinking of her softness of belly and what Giono describes as her two big headlights when lying in bed at night. Such a woman may have no external world to offer, but she's desirable and provides a "compressed internalized world" [257] to find pleasure within.
Unlike the young Deleuze, I don't see it as particularly dangerous or unspeakably painful for a woman to lose her being and become "no more than a belly, an overflowing materiality" [257]. For if, on the one hand, becoming-object allows for the "prodigious sexual success of women" [257], on the other, it allows them to gain their revenge upon the male subject (with whom friendship remains impossible).
III.
So far, then, Deleuze has establised an opposition between woman and the male-Other. Only the latter expresses a possible external world; to try and force the former into such a role compromises her internal life, with the latter understood as a union of contraries - material and immaterial aspects - that combine together mysteriously to give woman her essential identity.
Only a sadist would take pleasure in threatening this living interiority; the sort of man who imposes a mask of suffering on the woman, or who tells her: "Sit down and crease your forehead" [259].*
Or the sort of man, perhaps, who would deny a girl her makeup kit (Deleuze is adamant that the supernatural art of cosmetics is crucial in the formation of a woman's essence); or her expensive shoes (Deleuze describes the ankles as an important site of womanly consciousness and so naturally favours high-heels).
At this point, I'm sure there will be readers who will think I'm making this up - but I'm not; I'm doing my best to stick closely to the text. Deleuze really does, for example, write of eyeliner, lipstick, and nail varnish; he also discusses the problem of eyebrows (to pluck or not to pluck), beauty spots (of which we should be wary), and his penchant for freckles (a symbol of the interior):
"I do not understand at all why women are ashamed of [...] freckles and combat them with makeup [...] It can only be explained by women being mistaken as to their own essence." [261]
This last line is, I would imagine, for many women - not just those who identify as feminists - particularly galling, coming as it does from a precocious young philosopher who concludes that secretive, lying women - whose place "is not outside, it is in the house" [259] - basically need a man to reveal their truth - and a lover to caress them:
"And if the lover can approach the essence of woman through the caress as act, it is because the woman herself is being as caress [...] The woman therefore needs a lover. A lover who caresses her, and that is all. [...] Her being only exists in the form of an act performed by another." [264-65]
One wonders what Simone made of this if she read it ...?
Notes
*I feel that some explanation is needed for this otherwise cryptic line: according to Deleuze, a wrinkle on the forehead of the male-Other is a good thing. For the forehead of the male-Other is made for long, well-defined lines, signifying the attempt to see and understand better. But a wrinkle on a woman's forehead - "Oh! [...] one could cry, it is ridiculous and touching" [259].
Part 2 of this series on Deleuze's youthful writings - From Christ to the Bourgeoisie - can be read by clicking here.
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