Sartre derived his account of the vagina as lack from the phenomenology of slime

Evidence

Sartre engages in a description of slime and holes that leads him to identify the female sexual organs as a lack, as an “appeal to being,” an “appel d’être,” an “appeal for fl esh,” an “appel de chair.” Th e vagina as hole wants to be fi lled. It is a lack, it is lacking in fl esh. Th is all starts with his explanation of the nature of the slimy and the aff ective reaction of disgust it triggers in people. — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 104

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fixes the technical terms ‘appel d’être’ and ‘appel de chair’ and their derivation.
• CANDY: The claim that Sartre’s notorious ‘vagina as lack’ passage grew out of a meditation on slime is a compact, tweetable oddity.
• XREF: connects to: Sartre’s ontology of the slimy derived from personal disgust rather than pure insight — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 392; Sartre’s concept of the slimy encodes a gendered fear of feminine appropriation — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 133; Sartre exemplifies the Lacanian masculine subject repressing attachment to the maternal body — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 131

Broader Connections

• Sartre’s concept of the slimy encodes a gendered fear of feminine appropriation #expands (0.85) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 133
• Sartre’s ontology of the slimy derived from personal disgust rather than pure insight #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 392
• Sartre exemplifies the Lacanian masculine subject repressing attachment to the maternal body #expands (0.80) — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre, 131