Beauvoir’s ‘becomes’ means both passive construction and active self-making

Evidence

Famously, “one is not born a woman but becomes one” (SS, 267). But Beauvoir’s statement, and her ensuing account of women’s “lived experience,” invoke two senses of the verb “to become”: in becoming a gender, an ethnicity, a nationality, and so on, one “becomes” what one has been made by one’s situation, and one also “becomes” what one has made of oneself as such a situated existent. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 475

Categorization

• DEFINE: Disambiguates the double sense of ‘to become’ in Beauvoir’s most quoted line, essential for precise reading of The Second Sex.
• XREF: connects to: Beauvoir’s philosophy centers on how constraint and freedom shape our becoming — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1027; Time is not the container of becoming but is itself the becoming — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 257

Broader Connections

• Beauvoir’s philosophy centers on how constraint and freedom shape our becoming #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1027
• Time is not the container of becoming but is itself the becoming #expands (0.73) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 257