When I became pregnant for the first time, I wasn’t expecting such an intense bodily experience. My body had never been so heavy, tired, slow, and painful. But at the same time, I felt more alive, more embodied, more connected to myself, to the world, and to this other person who, in a totally incredible way, turned my body upside down before doing the same with my life.
That was eight years ago. Since then, I’ve had two other children. To understand what happened in my body when I was pregnant, I read a lot the German and French phenomenologists, but I couldn’t really find anything about women’s bodies, let alone pregnancy. It was among Anglo-Saxon feminists and philosophers that I found food for thought (I. Young, I. Tyler, C. Lundquist, S.LaChance Adams, K. Olliver, F. Verhage, A. Flakne, Ch. Battersby…). For the last forty years, they have written on the specificities of women’s bodies, but they are still largely unknown in France.
But is it really possible to think about pregnancy? Isn’t it an experience only to be lived? Like any intense bodily experience, no discourse can describe or explain precisely what it means to be pregnant. But pregnancy is not just about bodies, it is not just a natural process, contrary to what ancient philosophy believed. It involves a subject, and this event has an impact on the way the woman experiences her body and her relationship with the world.
My latest book sets out to explore the phenomenology of pregnancy. It explains why pregnancy has been excluded from philosophy for so long. It has been seen in ancient philosophy as a purely bodily, animal experience, taking place in women’s bodies without them actually taking part in it. Women were seen as mere containers for a developing fœtus. We have not yet completely rid ourselves of this vision of pregnancy, as we can see in the way we describe fertilization, or the fact that we allow ourselves to touch the pregnant woman’s belly—as if it was not really her body. Feminist philosophy, and most particularly in its French tradition, has also contributed to exclude from thought the pregnant subject. Simone de Beauvoir herself considered that pregnancy confined women to immanence, and that there was nothing specifically human about it.
Such a philosophy is not just for pregnant women: it concerns all women, at least as a potentiality inscribed in red in their bodies, every month. Women’s bodies are bodies that can be expected to carry life (even if this sometimes proves impossible). Therefore, they have a body that is open to the world, in the sense that the boundary between the self and the other is never certain. The other is not in front, in the distance. It could spring up from within and merge with the self.
Pregnancy metamorphoses the body, and is full of ambivalence. The body is distanced, cumbersome and tiring. At the same time, pregnancy can generate a new harmony with it. This distance with the world is reduced, I’m more aware of my body itself, and my body becomes flesh, more alive and connected to the world. From then on, the philosophy of pregnancy calls into question the unity of the subject, its permanence. It invites us to recognize our original interdependence, and the debt we owe to women. With the perception of intra-uterine movements, the pregnant subject is as if split, de-centered and plural. It is permeated with an otherness that becomes more and more a subject every day.
To think about the pregnant subject is not just a philosophical issue: if the pregnant subject is unthinkable, it is then difficult to consider that the woman is truly the subject of her pregnancy, as of her childbirth. Giving birth requires the greatest courage. Even if the contractions are passive, there is still someone giving birth and taking part in it. Then, such a philosophy concerns us all, because we all come from this body, with which we were intertwined, « neither one, nor two » (L. Irigaray). We all come from these “immemorial waters” (Luce Irigaray), from this quasi-fusion with another being who welcomed us, nourished us and carried us before giving birth to us. Pregnancy is the starting point for a whole new philosophy, because this being-within is the origin of us all. The being is not first separated, isolated. It is first carried, welcomed, before existing on its own. In other words, the relationship with the other is not secondary or optional. It is the foundation of our being, in such a way that without the other (the maternal body) and even without the others (the fleshly encounter between the maternal and paternal bodies), my existence would be impossible.
At last, philosophical reflection on pregnancy requires us to rethink the entire subject, who is always connected, interdependent and concerned, caring for others. The pregnant body thus offers a new model for thinking about ethics: I am bound to another because I owe my life to another. The pregnant body, from which I derive my existence, is the foundation of the ethical relationship with the other, the stranger. It’s an ethic of interdependence, where individuals cannot be thought of separately. “Harmony, love, and cooperation” are the foundations of this ethical relationship (S. LaChance Adams).
This ethic of interdependence is not exclusively feminine. It concerns us all, insofar as this original gift is the condition of our existence; and this gift obliges us all.
Marie Leborgne Lucas
Marie Leborgne Lucas is a feminist French philosopher. Having three kids, she is teaching philosophy in a French high-school.
