abstracts – phenomenology of pregnancy and drives

8/18/2019 Abstracts – Phenomenology of Pregnancy and Drives

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Abstracts – Phenomenology of Pregnancy and Drives

Stella Sanford, “From Conception to Legitimation: The Generative Metaphorics

of the Critique of Pure Reason and the Transcendental Method”In the phenomenology of pregnancy and birth the methods of phenomenology are brought to bear on the structure of these experiences and in the process are oftencritically transformed. This paper will attempt to take a step back from these

phenomenological analyses to investigate another, perhaps philosophicallyfoundational, relation between transcendental method and generation and birth – thatis, the relation between the metaphors of conception, generation, birth, birthcertificates and legitimacy in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (CPR ) and Kant’sconception of transcendental critique. It will suggest that prior to the application of

phenomenology to the experiences of pregnancy and birth, the idea of atranscendental method, derived from Kant, is itself already – problematically –

informed by the metaphorics of conception, generation and birth in Kant’s philosophy, and will consider the implications of this for phenomenology – including phenomenology of pregnancy and birth – today. There is an established literature onthe metaphorical discourse of legitimacy in Kant’s CPR and its contribution to Kant’sconception of critique as the ‘tribunal’ of reason. However, this paper will situate thediscourse of legitimacy within another metaphorical constellation, including‘conception’ and ‘birth’, in CPR , and consider these in relation to Kant’s explicitcomments on or references to theories of biological reproduction to suggest that thesemay have exerted a greater influence on his conception of the transcendental than has

previously been acknowledged. Granted both that the transcendental- phenomenological method differs in important respects from Kant’s and that feminist phenomenology has not been uncritical in its adoption of versions of it, the questionstill remains: what of this Kantian legacy still operates in phenomenology today, andwhat are its implications for a possible phenomenology of pregnancy and birth?

Sara Heinämaa, “‘Pregnant Embodiment’ – A Critical Perspective”A critical discussion about Iris Marion Youngs early article “Pregnant Embodiment.”

Eduardo Abrantes, “Mother Child, and their ‘Sound Envelope’ – aPhenomenological Inquiry on Embodied Awareness”Some of the most intimate, inspiring and thought-challenging glimpses into foetal lifehave been provided by the sense of sound. The above refers both to the access

provided by sonic medical techniques – from the early stethoscope, to the currentwide-spread ultrasonography - to the shared experience of feeling-listening and beingfelt-listened to, in early motherhood. When trying to translate from themedical/cognitive point of view into an experiential one, the questions that this sonicexperience elicit are usually focused on: how early does the foetus develop the abilityto hear? What does it hear? What does it sound like to be in a womb? Descriptions ofan “oceanic”, low frequency sonic universe pertain to this category. Another path ofinquiry one can follow is that taken by the French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu(1923-99) who in, amongst others, his 1985 work The Skin Ego , proposes the notionof “sound envelope” to describe the formative context of the acoustic exchange taking

place during and beyond foetal life – how it is essential to the construction of both the


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separate identity of mother and child, but also the systemic bond of theirintersubjective (re)awakening, and even to the development of language and thestructuring of drives. This paper proposes a phenomenological inquiry into thedynamics of the embodied acoustic interface between mother and child, building uponAnzieu's analysis, and using such notions as "resonance", “acoustic permeability” and

“sonic territoriality” in the specific context of the inaugural intersubjective experienceof child-bearing.

April Flakne, “Nausea as Interoceptive Annunciation”In many cases, it is the first “symptom.” Many women are overcome by a distinctiveand growing nausea in the very early stages of pregnancy. Thus the announcement ofnew life often comes in waves of illness. At this very early point, when the nauseafirst appears, the cells are still busy dividing and are only beginning to differentiateinto what will become specific organs, functions and body parts. The “body” of theother is, morphologically, nothing like a mature body. It is utterly dependent on thehost, its mother. Yet it is already affecting the (m)other body, deranging interoceptive

phenomena, as well as exteroceptive, as smells and taste predominate and color visionand hearing. In this paper, I will provide a phenomenological account of pregnancy-induced nausea as intercorporeal affect and intersensory derangement, arguing thatthe body of the other (in this case incipient) affects sensory coherence founded on themature body image and schema of the mother. This sensory derangement is an earlyintimation of the body-schematic changes that occur later in pregnancy as analyzed,for example, by Iris M. Young. I will contrast this view of nausea to that of threeother thinkers: 1) Sartre’s view, in which nausea is phenomenologically related toobjects and the “upsurge of being.” 2) Levinas’s view of nausea as a reaction toimmanence, and an urge toward transcendence (escape toward the Other). 3) Merleau-Ponty’s account of nausea as a confusion of levels, and therefore a destabilization ofspace. My focus on nausea as an intercorporeal affect that manifests throughintersensory derangement will show how spatialization indeed alters, but specificallythrough an interoceptive announcement of Otherness: the Other that is within me is noless Other, but otherness needn’t be conceived as an escape from body andimmanence, nor from an object-other that stands over and against me. Finally, I willargue that pregnancy nausea is a dramatic announcement of how everydayintercorporeality – the fact that we live in a world populated by living bodies – affectssensory coherence. Other bodies affect us on interoceptive, proprioceptive, andintersensory “levels,” and the Other announces herself somatically as well asideationally.

Tine Schauer Eri, “‘The Waiting Mode’: First-time Mothers’ Experiences ofWaiting for Labour Onset”Over the last decades pregnant women have experienced a change in how the medicalsociety views the estimated date of delivery. The time a child was expected to be bornwas earlier based on women’s own knowledge about the conception and the lastmenstrual period. Today, the ‘experts’ produce the knowledge of when a child is duethrough technologies outside the women’s bodies. There has been growing attentionson the accurate estimation of the date of delivery due to the rapid development ofultrasound technologies. Still, there is no method for the precise timing of the onset oflabour and despite the accuracy of the estimated date of delivery; pregnant women

still have to wait for the various signs of labour in their bodies. This paper exploresfirst-time mothers’ lived experiences of waiting for labour onset in the days around


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the estimated date of delivery (EDD), and is based on an empirical material created incooperation with seventeen women before and after the birth of their child. The studyshows that participants moved into a state of active waiting, “the waiting mode”, inthe days around the EDD. The EDD was pivotal in shaping the study informant’sexperiences of waiting. The date entailed a shift in how they perceived their bodies,

and how they interpreted bodily signs. The paper comprises the interpretations of thewomen’s experiences and offers a discussion on experiences of the birthing body in amedicalized context.

Erik Jansson Boström, “Intersubjectivity – How to Create the Other From theSecond Other’s Position”In this paper I will explore some aspects of the birth of the other from the secondother’s position, i.e. the coming into existence of the child from the position of theother parent. The reason why I choose to talk about the position of the mother’s

partner as the second other is that I believe that Beauvoir’s theoretical frameworkfrom The Second Sex can be put to work to reveal some aspects of the structure of this

position. I will argue that the unborn child is the unknown other and that the mother isthe subject, the centre. She is creating the other. She has the closest, most privileged

position in getting to know the other. The partner is the second other, who also tries toget to know the other, but from a farther distance. While the mother-child relation is arelation of directness the relation of the partner-child is a relation of indirectness. Inexploring how the coming into existence is gradual and can start before the momentof birth or even the actual conception, I want to argue that the other is not so much“coming into existence” as “created as already existing”, through imagination , play and body contact – stressing the points of acknowledgement , deciding that the other infact “is” where you can go either way – recognizing or denying the other as existingand introducing the other into our life world. To create the other’s existence is to“culturalize” the other. I believe that the aspects that I reveal of the creating of theunborn child have a wider importance, as I believe that they are more or less active inevery creation of intersubjectivity, i.e. in every creation of a community.

Alice Pugliese, “Phenomenology of Drives: Between Biological and PersonalLife”In my presentation I propose a phenomenological account of drives on the basis ofHusserl’s unpublished manuscripts that could provide the theoretical basis for moreconcrete analyses. The phenomenological reflection on drives affects the generalconception of personal experience and of the life of consciousness. I do not relegate

drives to the biological, physical and mechanical sphere derived from an abstractinterpretation of corporeity as independent reality. Instead I want to integrate them ina broad description of subjective and personal life. A phenomenological account ofdrives points out a possible transcendental role of instincts as a source of perceptionand of constitution of the sense of the world. Instincts cease to be understood as anindividual, blind force and turn out to be an important component of cognitive

processes with a primordial function in the setting of relevancies and with anintersubjective significance. This leads to the characterization of drives as aconnecting force between different levels and functions of consciousness sketching amore complex account of consciousness itself. This poses questions regarding theepistemological status of drives, their possible contribution to perception, experience

and knowledge and finally to the orientation of the subject in the world. In a non-reductive way drives fit into the peculiar intertwining of physical, psychological and


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epistemological dimensions that constitute our daily experience. The assessment ofthis epistemological basis will then open up two different research directions. On theone hand we have to inquire into the problem of the foundation of science and in

particular of medicine as a science and practice bound to the personal experience of body. Medicine is a natural, “hard” science that yet addresses the whole person with

its uncertainty, ambiguity and shaded position and thus needs a peculiar and criticalfoundation. The new development of technology opens many questions concerningthe availability of the own body and the symmetric or asymmetric relationships withothers so that the epistemological reflections about medicine show immediate effectson a general ethical ground. On the other hand, the phenomenological account ofdrives as an integral part of the life of consciousness suggests an important moralassumption: instincts and drives are neither a merely private matter nor can they beused as a simple excuse for irrational, egoistic or immoral action. Interpreted astranscendental, transpersonal forces like Husserl appears to do, drives can provideground for the encounter with others, for mutual understanding and respect. Finally Iwill explore the ethical issues deriving from a critical and phenomenological approachto drives.

Natalie Depraz, “The Intimate Other: a First-Person Phenomenology ofPregnancy”On the basis of a first inquiry on the experience of pregnancy (published 2004 andmore recently 2011 in French), I would like to focus on a more limited segment linkedto a first-person experience which ended up with a caesarean birth. Reflecting on suchan experience in contrast to other natural pregnancies, I would like to describe anewand further the modality of intimacy of the coming other at work and thedifferentiated relationship to boundaries and suffering between self and other thuscreated. Following the self-elicitating method founded by P. Vermersch, I will test thefollowing theoretical hypothesis: caesarean birth is a case of delivery which seems to

partly avoid suffering on both sides (mother and child), in contrast with a naturaldelivery. What are the lived effects and experiential features of such an event? Does itquestion and displace the usual boundaries between self and other during natural

pregnancy and delivery? Does it create other kinds of interactions between motherand child? While re-living my own experience through a self-elicitation of it, I will tryto give some first accounts and checkings of the mentioned hypothesis.

Jonna Bornemark, “Being One and Being Two”In the Western philosophical tradition intersubjectivity tends to be discussed from the

starting-point of a meeting between two adult human beings. Here subjectivity is mostoften constituted first, and only thereafter intersubjectivity. In contrast to suchapproaches philosophers like Gail Soffer have used a phenomenological geneticapproach through which the development of intersubjectivity is investigated from thestarting-point of the experiences of the infant (as we understand it). In this paper Iwould like to continue Soffer’s analysis and discuss the experience of pregnancy as anexperience that goes beyond the categories of “you” and “me,” for the child as well asfor the mother. With the aid of Edith Stein’s concept of Einfühlung and Max Scheler’sconcept of Einsfühlung I would like to discuss pregnancy as a paradoxical experienceof being one and being two at the same time. I want to investigate how a certain layerin experience could be formulated as a shared experience of life, an experience

beyond subjectivity but simultaneously an experience that immediately separates us.


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In such a way intersubjectivity finds its roots not only in subjectivity, but also in anexperience that goes beyond subjectivity.

Sarah LaChance Adams, “Sex and Fecundity in Bataille: Death, Fusion, and Cell

Division”Bataille describes the eroticism as “assenting to life up to the point of death” and asmarked by the search for a feeling of continuity. Death, reproduction, sex, andreligion are some of the ways in which we seek this continuity. When asexual beingsreproduce by splitting into two new creatures, Bataille believes, the original animal isdestroyed. However, there is a moment of continuity between the two beings whenone becomes two . The continuity found in sexual reproduction is distinct; it occurswhen two creatures momentarily fuse into one, when sperm and ovum unite. Batailleclaims that we are revolted by the “grotesque idea” of dividing as asexual organismsdo, and that we more easily entertain the idea of fusion with another. In response tothis, I argue that pregnant women undergo a process not unlike single-cell division.The original woman is destroyed as her body becomes directed to the service ofanother. Her identity is cleaved and ambiguous, neither solely her own nor another’s.Sexual reproduction is as much about division as it is fusion for the woman whoharbors the foetus. Bataille further claims that erotic life need not be related toreproduction. Bataille is correct that the telos of erotic sexual activity is not reducibleto reproduction alone. However, the possibility of getting pregnant is rarely far fromthe mind of pregnable women during sex. Furthermore, getting pregnant is a greaterexample of erotic life than Bataille anticipates because of the various deaths the

pregnant woman and mother undergoes. Bataille’s account is ultimately androcentricas it ignores the differing perspectives that pregnable, previously pregnant, orcurrently pregnant women may bring to the encounter. A more complete account oferotic life requires the contributions of female-bodied experience, which I intend to

provide.

Erik Bryngelsson, “The Problem of Unity in Psychoanalysis: Birth-trauma andSeparation”By proposing the event of birth as the original and universal trauma that each human

being suffers from, psychoanalysis found a means to posit an originary experience ofunity with the mother to which all human actions in the last instance strive to recreate.One of the problems, however, with locating the beginnings of the individual inintrauterine life is the same as with primary narcissism where the child would be

self ‐

sufficient and completely satisfied, in these states of full unity, there can be nosuch thing as an individual. Lacanian psychoanalysis solves this situation by reversingthe terms: the child’s first experience is not located in an undifferentiated state withthe mother, be it in intrauterine life or in the mothers care. The child ‐ mother unity isthe effect, not the foundation of the individual. As every child is prematurely born,incapable of caring for herself, her primary experience is rather that of discord. Theidentity she procures through a narcissistic image of herself as self ‐ subsistent is theanticipation of completeness. Full satisfaction in this union is however impossible,since it is only an illusion; a harmony the bodily drives can never achieve. And toomuch pleasure can be unbearable, as can also an exaggerated proximity betweenmother and child. Anxiety intervenes then not as the signal of the danger of being

separated from the mother, on the contrary, anxiety is a signal against the danger of being swallowed by an intrusive quest for an imaginary unity; in this case the pleasure


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principle really does serve the death drive. I will try to present how the child confrontsher own coming into the world by separating from the mother in order to relate toothers. This separation is accomplished in relation to the mother’s intrusive andalienating desire, by the introjection of that which was foreign into the most proper,subsequently, this ex ‐ timate object is the cause of affective relations to others.

Anna Petronella Fredlund, “The Phenomenological Analysis of Breastfeeding:Enslavement by Biology or Activity of Transcendence?”My aim here is to examine some of Beauvoir’s statements on the biology issue aboutthe female body, notably those on breastfeeding, and relate them to recent research on

breastfeeding. Whether Beauvoir relied uncritically on the medical science of her timewhen she pronounced her statements on biological facts, or whether she is simplygiving a description of the contemporary medical perspective on woman, in the waythat she is accounting for other mythologies, is rather ambiguous in her texts.However that may be, there are reasons to believe that it is medical science that hastransformed the social activity of breastfeeding into a natural (mal)function, needingthe remedy of science and the aid of the formula and baby food industries to work

properly. Therefore, a phenomenological analysis of breastfeeding must take intoaccount women’s experience of breastfeeding in all its diversity, but also the politicalstakes of science and how it deals with the female body. In the earlier work Ethics of

Ambiguity , the fundamental tie between existences is clearly affirmed in that myconcrete freedom is dependent in a radical way on the freedom of others. In TheSecond Sex , by contrast, this inter-human dependency functions as one of the reasonsfor the subjugation of women. If we take a look at recent research on breastfeeding itmay appear that the experience of breastfeeding, contrary to what Beauvoir claimed,is a pre-eminently intersubjective and communicative activity, and reveals theambiguity of human existence that was so important for her thought: a mortal andvulnerable being whose meaning is from the outset determined by the society it livesin, a transcendence in immanence. In order to make a convincing phenomenologicalanalysis of breastfeeding, the crucial notions we rely upon must be understood in anew way. If the concepts of transcendence and immanence are seen as dialecticallyrelated to one another, then the immanence of bodily functions, breast and mammaryglands can become the precondition of a particular kind of loving relation to anotherhuman being, who is different and yet intimately close.

abstracts – phenomenology of pregnancy and drives

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