Review of Philosophical Inquiries into Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering: Maternal Subjects, ed. Sheila Lintott and Maureen Sander-Staudt. New York and London: Routledge, 2012. (original) (raw)
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Philosophical Inquiries into Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering
Philosophical Inquiries into Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering, 2013
reviewed by anna hennessey The past two years mark an impressive moment in the history of philosophical scholarship on childbirth, pregnancy, and mothering. The almost simultaneous publication of Philosophical Inquiries into Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering, part of Routledge's series on Contemporary Philosophy, and Fordham University Press' 2013 volume, Coming to Life: Philosophies of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering (edited by Sarah LaChance Adams and Caroline R. Lundquist) demonstrates the growing academic interest in the philosophical import of maternal subjects. The University of Oregon's 2009 conference, Philosophical Inquiry into Pregnancy, Childbirth and Mothering Conference catalyzed the compilation and publication of both works. These works help fill the longstanding intellectual void that revolves around topics of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering within the field of philosophy and the humanities. In this review, I examine the material of Routledge's publication alone. In their introduction, editors Sheila Lintott and Maureen Sander-Staudt join with the volume's authors to question canonical male understandings of pregnancy, birth and mothering in philosophy, as found for example in works by Plato, who categorizes pregnancy and childbirth as mere bodily functions and motherhood as a sub-rational activity; Aristotle, who diminishes and ignores motherhood's import beyond its connection to biology; and Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who naturalize motherhood and describe it as a romantic or naturalistic endeavor as opposed to a philosophical one (3). The editors explain that although philosophers have historically focused
The Phenomenology of Woman to Mother: The Transformative Experience of Childbirth
1944
We have no philosophy of birth. Mary O'Brien argues that this hole in the fabric of knowledge is not merely an oversight, a dropped stitch in epistemology. In The Politics of Reproduction she argues that the very systems of thought that we have at hand to describe, explain, and bestow significance are themselves male compensa tions for the inferential nature of paternity and the female dominion of reproduction.
"An equivocal couple overwhelmed by life": A Phenomenological analysis of pregnancy
philoSOPHIA, 2014
Two conceptions of human generativity prevail in contemporary feminist philosophy. First, several contributors argue that the experience of pregnancy, when analyzed by phenomenological tools, undermines several distinctions that are central to western philosophy, most importantly the subject-object distinction and the self-other and own-alien distinctions. This line of argument was already outlined by Iris Marion Young in her influential essay "Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation" (1984). The other dominant argument is related to the first one, and it states that organic birth is the event that establishes the first experiential separation between the self and the other. On this understanding the mother-fetus relation would not involve any relations between two corporeal selves; all such relations would be postnatal. This notion has been defended, for example, by Christine Schües (1997, 2000) and Johanna Oksala (2003). 1
The fundamental and irreducible experience of carrying a child and bringing forth new life from one’s own body is in this anthology subjected to careful analyses that specifically, though not exclusively, draw on female experiences. In this way the crucial role of a phenomenology of pregnancy for contemporary thought is investigated. Exploring the phenomenon of pregnancy not just as a biological process, but also as a problem of lived bodily meaning, the contributions investigate a wide array of experiences that engage the limits of human life, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and ethics, but also opens important methodological perspectives on the relation transcendental phenomenology and empirical research. Eds. Jonna Bornemark and Nicholas Smith Content: Jonna Bornemark, Nicholas Smith, Introduction Nicholas Smith, Phenomenology of Pregnancy: A Cure for Philosophy? Stella Sandford, Feminist Phenomenology, Pregnancy and Transcendental Subjectivity Alice Pugliese, Phenomenology of Drives: Between Biological and Personal Life Sarah LaChance Adams, Erotic Intersubjectivity: Sex, Death, and Maternity in Bataille April Flakne, Nausea as Interoceptive Annunciation Mao Naka, The Otherness of Reproduction: Passivity and Control Erik Jansson Boström, The Unborn Child and the Father: Acknowledgement and the Creation of the Other Joan Raphael-Leff, “Two-in-One-Body”: Unconscious Representations and Ethical, Dimensions of Inter-Corporeality in Childbearing Grainney Lucey, The Difference of Experience between Maternity and Maternal in the Work of Julia Kristeva Erik Bryngelsson, The Problem of Unity in Psychoanalysis: Birth Trauma and Separation Jonna Bornemark, Life beyond Individuality: A-subjective Experience in Pregnancy