Symbols are elaborated socially like language, not inherited from a mysterious unconscious

Evidence

A symbol does not emerge as an allegory worked out by a mysterious unconscious: it is the apprehension of a signification through an analogue of the signifying object; because of the identity of the existential situation cutting across all existents and the identity of the facticity they have to cope with, significations are revealed to many individuals in the same way; symbolism did not fall out of heaven or rise out of subterranean depths: it was elaborated like language, by the human reality that is at once Mitsein and separation; and this explains that singular invention also has its place: in practice the psychoanalytical method must accept this whether or not doctrine authorizes it. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128

Categorization

• XREF: Picks up her earlier critique of the collective unconscious and presages later social-constructionist accounts of symbolic meaning; resonates with Merleau-Ponty’s ‘body is generality’. — connects to: Cultural symbols carry no fixed meaning; meaning shifts with the social field — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1012; Language is socially constructed and speaks through individuals; The collective unconscious is culturally imposed, not biologically inherited — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 668 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Defines what a symbol is for Beauvoir: apprehension of signification through an analogue, socially elaborated.

Broader Connections

• The collective unconscious is socially acquired, not inherited genetically. #corroborates (0.92) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 664
• The collective unconscious is culturally imposed, not biologically inherited #corroborates (0.85) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 668
• Language is socially constructed and speaks through individuals #corroborates (0.80)
• Cultural symbols carry no fixed meaning; meaning shifts with the social field #corroborates (0.78) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1012