The generative body: the rebirth of the social body in the experience of motherhood

Abstract

"Giving birth", "coming into the world", and "begetting" are different expressions that recount procreation from different perspectives: that of the mother, the child, the parents. In this article we intend to turn our attention to women's protagonism, which has experienced a long period of recognition (it is through motherhood that Western women redeemed themselves from their early "sinful" deeds, and entered the collective imagination in so many cultures of the world) on which the spotlight has gradually turned off, coinciding with the hospitalization of childbirth. And so, as medicalization exacerbated the desubjectivization of procreation by reducing the unborn child to a fetus (B. Duden) and the mother to a pregnant woman, the female body was progressively dispossessed of its experiences and, with them, of its knowledge. But in this way, the whole social body, with the connections that create bonds and interdependencies, also missed an opportunity for greater justice and equity.