Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric by McDermott Lydia;

Author:McDermott, Lydia;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Two disciplining interventions are introduced into the routine lives of pregnant women: medical interventions and self-discipline as guided by these advice manuals. One primary goal of these interventions is to prevent the deformation of the infant by the mother’s wily imagination, which echoes the previous theory of the wandering womb. The wandering womb causes illness in the woman who is not reproducing. The maternal imagination can deform the infant of a woman who is pregnant. Furthermore, once the infant has received the impression of the mother’s desires in a malformation and is born, it represents a compulsory disclosure of the mother’s desires. These malformations were often termed as monstrosities, and as Lindal Buchanan has pointed out, could be used to condemn a mother for various sins, such as heresy in the case of Anne Hutchinson.[24] The discourse surrounding monstrosity and the maternal imagination can be seen as surveillance and forced confession, where deformity is evidence of excess in desires and of lack of discipline.

Confession is not just about punishment, but is in itself a kind of discipline and, as Foucault reminds us, “one of the main rituals” for the “production of truth” in Western culture.[25] In the discipline of confession we find words for our sins. According to Foucault, the seventeenth-

century decree by the Christian Church that all Christians must perform the sacrament of “confession” led to a multiplication of discourses on sexuality and a multiplication of sexual expression and desire.[26] He writes: “An imperative was established: Not only will you confess to acts contravening the law, but you will seek to transform your desire, your every desire, into discourse.”[27] This transformation echoes the process of the maternal imagination, where the mother’s desires are transferred to the physical development of the fetus, deforming it.

The pregnant womb in eighteenth-century obstetric texts is now cast as a desiring animal causing strange cravings (an idea we still hold) that could affect the outcome of the fetus: “A mark like a bunch of grapes, for example, results from the pregnant woman’s unfulfilled craving for grapes.”[28] But it is not just the power of the womb to crave, but also women’s imaginations, a craving of the mind, that could affect the baby’s form. I would like to read this discourse critically as a form of potential power for maternal women. This literal embodiment of imagination not only reflects the multiplication of discourses Foucault describes, but also the cunning of Metis, which could manifest itself in the goddess’s embodiment. This shape-shifting cunning correlates to the theory of the maternal imagination by which a woman wishing to conceal the true paternity of her child—a knowledge domain peculiarly her own—could explain the child’s physical appearance through appealing to her powerful imagination. This ability to conceal affords the maternal woman some amount of power, just as in the ritualistic festivals surrounding the aischrologia women exchanged their secret knowledge of gynecology and passed on its power. In one example Kukla cites, a white woman births a dark-skinned baby and explains that she had been looking at a painting featuring a dark-skinned person at the time of conception.

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