Event Title
The pregnant subject is no less a subject: Values, science, and technology in childbirth
Start Date
27-6-2010 9:00 AM
End Date
27-6-2010 10:30 AM
Description
This presentation is part of the Technology and Intervention in Pregnancy and Childbirth track.
In relation to the notion of labor, birth, and early upbringing, we risk our concept of the world and of the human being. The silence in philosophy about the female body and, especially, all those experiences that are markedly feminine since they have to do with pregnancy and birth, is too patent not to be noted.
Thus, I would like to say at least one thing, even if briefly, about the incapacity of the history of philosophy to describe and take into account vital experiences so significantly human as the experience of living within a pregnant body, a laboring body, and a recently labored body. To tell a long story shortly, I will mention one of the more extended thesis (one might be tempted to say, general prejudices) not only in the history of philosophy, but also in the history of ideas and culture; namely, the claim according to which the woman’s capacity to create is identified with the fact of being able to give birth. This topic—woman creates by giving birth—is complemented by another idea, not at all trivial: the idea according to which the process of giving birth does not need to be reflected upon. The process of pregnancy is unconscious; it does not need the brain or the mind; it does not need to be reflected upon. The consequence of this line of thought is clear: women create in an unconscious manner; the process is natural and mechanical, in the sense of its being a process foreign to her will, her ability to decide, or her freedom of expression.
It must be emphasized that the argument according to which, first, a woman’s capacity to create is equivalent to her capacity to give birth; and, second, that giving birth is not a rational process, is a highly extended topic of misogyny or patriarchy. Thus, when I say that pregnancy, labor, and birth are rational processes that need to be reflected upon, I mean that the subject’s desires, wishes, expectations, intentions, volitions, thoughts, judgments, points of view, values, etc. are inherent parts of the process of birth. So I claim that birth and labor, as many other human experiences, are not only natural processes, but human acts and behaviors. As such, they can―or cannot― be experienced and lived by the subject in a creative, free, valuable, worthy, humanizing way, or quite the opposite, in a submissive, subjected, inertial, humiliating, and reifying manner. The pregnant subject, simply on account of being pregnant, is no less a subject. Her behavior, as well as the space of action she enjoys, can and should be judged and valued, according to human freedom and its exercise.
In my opinion, both philosophy and feminist thinking must still walk a long path to achieve a conception of the pregnant subject that is truly a human subject (not just a human body). To start with, they must question the concept of pregnancy, labor, and birth as a non-rational process that is more comfortably placed in the field of nature than in the field of subjectivity and humanity. Furthermore, they can warn us against the use of the metaphor of a container and its (sic) ‘content’ to describe the relation between the pregnant woman and her baby. Lastly, they could criticize the conception of babies as being independent entities whose survival is best promoted through medical, technological, and institutional intervention rather than by leaving free space and time for the bond between mother and baby to develop. For only if we accept that a mother and her baby build a special kind of unity during pregnancy, delivery, and the first stages following birth, can we understand what is going on in that special period of life.
On my side, I am convinced that there are issues around the pregnancy of the subject that deserve philosophical inquiry. In this talk I will focus on just one of them. Thus, the topic that I propose to you as philosophically interesting is: human value and birth conditions in developed countries. Or to be more precise: the relations, tensions, and contradictions that presently exist between the symbolic universe of giving birth and the reality of birth attention in many countries of the well-developed areas of the world. Birth conditions can be terrible in places where we would not expect them to be. This is not because of a lack of economical, intellectual, scientific, or technological resources, but despite all of them. To mention just one example, the need to humanize birth in my own country, Spain, is absolutely urgent. I will mention just one fact: In Spain, 23% of women give birth through a cesarean. This is the case of my country, but the situation is not too different in other developed countries.
In sum, the discourse on maternity has many hidden places that have been very little studied, analyzed, or criticized. Birth concerns all of us. We all were born; and many of us encounter birth again when laboring our own children. Birth issues are indeed very influential to our values, worldviews, concepts, and forms of life. The importance of such a topic as the dehumanization of birth with respect to the research on values is thus worth considering. This would, in my opinion, make for a significant contribution to value inquiry in an expanding world.
The pregnant subject is no less a subject: Values, science, and technology in childbirth
This presentation is part of the Technology and Intervention in Pregnancy and Childbirth track.
In relation to the notion of labor, birth, and early upbringing, we risk our concept of the world and of the human being. The silence in philosophy about the female body and, especially, all those experiences that are markedly feminine since they have to do with pregnancy and birth, is too patent not to be noted.
Thus, I would like to say at least one thing, even if briefly, about the incapacity of the history of philosophy to describe and take into account vital experiences so significantly human as the experience of living within a pregnant body, a laboring body, and a recently labored body. To tell a long story shortly, I will mention one of the more extended thesis (one might be tempted to say, general prejudices) not only in the history of philosophy, but also in the history of ideas and culture; namely, the claim according to which the woman’s capacity to create is identified with the fact of being able to give birth. This topic—woman creates by giving birth—is complemented by another idea, not at all trivial: the idea according to which the process of giving birth does not need to be reflected upon. The process of pregnancy is unconscious; it does not need the brain or the mind; it does not need to be reflected upon. The consequence of this line of thought is clear: women create in an unconscious manner; the process is natural and mechanical, in the sense of its being a process foreign to her will, her ability to decide, or her freedom of expression.
It must be emphasized that the argument according to which, first, a woman’s capacity to create is equivalent to her capacity to give birth; and, second, that giving birth is not a rational process, is a highly extended topic of misogyny or patriarchy. Thus, when I say that pregnancy, labor, and birth are rational processes that need to be reflected upon, I mean that the subject’s desires, wishes, expectations, intentions, volitions, thoughts, judgments, points of view, values, etc. are inherent parts of the process of birth. So I claim that birth and labor, as many other human experiences, are not only natural processes, but human acts and behaviors. As such, they can―or cannot― be experienced and lived by the subject in a creative, free, valuable, worthy, humanizing way, or quite the opposite, in a submissive, subjected, inertial, humiliating, and reifying manner. The pregnant subject, simply on account of being pregnant, is no less a subject. Her behavior, as well as the space of action she enjoys, can and should be judged and valued, according to human freedom and its exercise.
In my opinion, both philosophy and feminist thinking must still walk a long path to achieve a conception of the pregnant subject that is truly a human subject (not just a human body). To start with, they must question the concept of pregnancy, labor, and birth as a non-rational process that is more comfortably placed in the field of nature than in the field of subjectivity and humanity. Furthermore, they can warn us against the use of the metaphor of a container and its (sic) ‘content’ to describe the relation between the pregnant woman and her baby. Lastly, they could criticize the conception of babies as being independent entities whose survival is best promoted through medical, technological, and institutional intervention rather than by leaving free space and time for the bond between mother and baby to develop. For only if we accept that a mother and her baby build a special kind of unity during pregnancy, delivery, and the first stages following birth, can we understand what is going on in that special period of life.
On my side, I am convinced that there are issues around the pregnancy of the subject that deserve philosophical inquiry. In this talk I will focus on just one of them. Thus, the topic that I propose to you as philosophically interesting is: human value and birth conditions in developed countries. Or to be more precise: the relations, tensions, and contradictions that presently exist between the symbolic universe of giving birth and the reality of birth attention in many countries of the well-developed areas of the world. Birth conditions can be terrible in places where we would not expect them to be. This is not because of a lack of economical, intellectual, scientific, or technological resources, but despite all of them. To mention just one example, the need to humanize birth in my own country, Spain, is absolutely urgent. I will mention just one fact: In Spain, 23% of women give birth through a cesarean. This is the case of my country, but the situation is not too different in other developed countries.
In sum, the discourse on maternity has many hidden places that have been very little studied, analyzed, or criticized. Birth concerns all of us. We all were born; and many of us encounter birth again when laboring our own children. Birth issues are indeed very influential to our values, worldviews, concepts, and forms of life. The importance of such a topic as the dehumanization of birth with respect to the research on values is thus worth considering. This would, in my opinion, make for a significant contribution to value inquiry in an expanding world.