Edited by SARAH LACHANCE ADAMS and CAROLINE R. LUNDQUIST Coming to Life Philosophies ofPregnancy, Childbirth, andMothering FOrtDHAM UI'HVE.B.SITY Puss NmtI York • 2613 ~~ --- --- - ~~ - --- --- ------~~ - --- - Contents Fan",.rt/ Eva Kittay '" Ackn"whJpf!1lts xv IJwtzoductiont Tlte Phihnophical Slgnincatlce ofPrepanq, ChiMbirth. and Motheri.ng Saruh laChance Adams and Caroline R. Lundquist J PAR" 1: 'fHE PHJLOSOPIUCAL CANON 1 Plato, Makmity. and Power~ Can We Get. Diffenn.t Midwife? ernrl>", D. O>e 31 2 OfCounge Bom; Re8eaioas on Childbirth and Manly Com'll' Kayky Yarnallis .7 • Orisina.lHlabitliuon: Pregnant Fluh Q AInolute Ho.plt>llty

p"""", Gr..y 71 4 The Binh 111£ Senal Dlfferenftl A Feminist Response

to Mer1cau-Ponty

Lisa Gucntlur 118 • PART II! ETHICSj

I 5 Binking Responsibility: A PhenomenologiW Perspect.ive on th.c: Moral Significance orBirth GallWe!ss 109 • Birthmothen lind Matcm.alldentity: Th~ Terms of Relinquidu'dfllt Dorothy Rogers 120 I 7 What', an Adoptive Mother to Do? When Your OtUd's De.sires An: .. Problem Melissa Burchard 138 I PAkT II], POUTICS • 'l'h~ Pro-Choice Pw-Ufcr: &ttJing th4! False Dichotom.y Bertha Alvarez Manninen 171 • The Politiw"Natl.tl'c'" of Pregnancy and Childbirth Candace Johnson 193 ,. Di:Siempowued 'Wome.rd The Midwlfery Modd and Metlkallntetvendon Sonya Charles 215 PART IV; POPllUk CULTUIUi .. Koock Me Up. Knodt Me Down! Images ot Pregnancy in Hollywood Film and Popular Culture Kelly Oliver 241 12 Exposing the: Breatt The: Animal and the: Abject ill American Attltadea TuwaM. Btasrfudlng Rcbe<:ca Tuvel 263 PART V: FEMINIST PHENOKINOLOGY 13 The Order ofLife: How Plumomenologia of Pregnancy Revise and Reject ncoriea of the Suhjea Talia Welsh 283 14 The: V'uiotl ofthe ArtistlMothen Tbe Stu.ase Creativity ofhlnting and. Pregnancy Flon:-nden Verhage 300 NIIUt. 321 Bibllog>'4/>by 371 Lilt.fa,,,trib,,hm 393 lmh. 397 111 • (AibU:DQ • r Foreword EVA KITTAY What a joy to see a coñtion such as this. 10 it. Sarah LaChance Adams and Caroline Lundquist: realize one Qf the hopes of the earlier generation of femini&t philosophers of whkh I am a part: that philosophy takes seri- ously the experience and Jives ofwomen, Every woman, whether she has embarked on tbe path of motherhood and whether she has gotten there via pregnancy and childbirth. is faced with the default social expectation that maternity 1$ her dC$'dny and ner principlc source ofaccomplishment and joy. A concomitant ideology. found not only in Western society but also more globally, is drat nO{ only the.social but even the ontQlogical StatUS ofwoman is tied to her capacity to bear childtcñ give birth to them. and rear them. Therefore, every woman h touched by the topi~ covc:red here. whether they are part of her actual experience or the imaginary through which women's suhjectiviry is constructed. Hence, these concerns are central (0 any phiiosopnicaJ projecr that takes me lives of women seriously. 1he essays here place the nurturtlt\Ce. physkality, and sttuatedness of mothering in dialogue with the ab.suactlon and putative universality of philosophy's canonical works. 'flIey explore the profound shaping of a woman's identity and subjectivity tbrough me process ofpregnancy. chiM~ birth, and mothering: both when thete is and when-through mis.::aniage. abortion, or adoption-there is no child to nurture and raise. The essays ate explored through the 'WOrks of traditional male phiJosoph-ets such a Plato, Niett.sche,. Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida, as well as the groundbreaking works of feminist philosopbers such as Sara Ruddick, Iris ., I ~

I The Order ofLife II How Pbetwmtmologies ufPngnamry Revise amiReject 1beorie. ofthe subject ~ TALIA WELSH II " Phenomenologies of pregnancy offer important contributions to feministI scholarship surrounding pregnancy, cWldbirth, and mothering. Femjnisu explore how traditional philosophical accounts of a "universal" Qf "ge:~ netic" human. experience are at minimum CompliQl.tM and at maximum refuted by theoretical attention co the creation and ca,re of children. A universal account argues that. whjle not inclusive of the obvious diversity of human experience. a generic description of the subject as autonomous, rationã genderkss, unified, and discrete from other subjects is pbikwophi~ c;aUy sufficient. On the ~ of it. this does not deny difference but merdy denies the philosophical import of OUI all-too-human differences. Work- ing against this tradition. feminist theories about pregnancy. childbirth. and mothering are both descriptive and prescriptive; they point out 1acu~ nae in universal theories of the subject: as well as the political dangers of consciously or unconsciously ignoring our experienc« ofbirth and depen- dence. Feminist thought continues to explain how a lack ofattention to traditionally female concerns has shaped theories that go far beyond the dire<:t discussion about the creation and care of children. This essay explores the challenges to universal accounts of the subjcct raised by phenomenologies ofpregnancy. It ouclines how phenomenologies of pregnancy indicate a need to rethink dassical theories where human experience is considered [0 be commonly defined as autonomous, rational. gendedcs,,'i:, unified. and discrete. It asks ifthese phenomenologies are a criti- cal expansion upon generic acoounts ofhuman experience or ifthey In.d.lcate 1 283 the impossibility ofany such a(:CQunt. Do phenomenologies of pregnancy lmpor=tly, su<h a trndency filii, "' ad.:quatdy reflect upon ,he lived body., illustrate the need for 3 more complex philosophical understanding of the Since pregnancy is very much an embodied matter, phenomenologies human subject or do they highlight the futility ofany such account? Phenomenology asks for careful descriptions ofexperience while bracket~ iog orher philosophical investments. Thus, it is an ideal method for consid- ering the possible relevance ofan unexplored territory ofhuman experience. Existential pbenomenological accounts are particularly open (0 exploration withoo.t limiting the kind of truth rhat must be discovered. For many exir teotial accounts. the philosophical subje(;t is always already-die buman sub-- jecr, and as such. hum.an concerns are at least potentially relevant. Mer:leau- Ponty's existentialist embodiment theory provides a phenomenological method for exploring uncharted. territory in lived experienu=. Acareful description of pregnancy brings (0 our atCention the depth of (he philosophical potency ofpregnant embodiment, Merleau~Pontian-iñ spired phenomenologies ofpregnancy reveal that pregnancy is a significant subject matter for philosophy. Phenomenologies of pregnancy challenge the validity of a theory that suggests a universal atXOum will suffice. We ask here: whae does [he critical appwach in phenomenologies of pregnancy ~all upon us to dõ Are we to rtject the subject altogether as central? Or are we to r~vis(" our traditional descriptions of the subject? We examine these tWO options and argu;::: for the latter. Pregnancy can be seen to operare as a kind of foucau1dian lirnit.-experience that rejects me centrality of the suh~ ject. But the exploration ofpregnancy in feminist theory upholds the value of working from the subject's lived experience. rather than from tbe subjett as a disembodied universal monad. Such .an approach does noe isolate pregnancy as supplementary to phenomenology. Phenomenologies ofpreg- nancy show us how the divetsity ofexperience is a c:onclusion of phenom- enologicaJ reflection and nor, as some critics suggCSt, an indication of the failure ufphenomenology. Maleau.-PQnty and Feminist Pherunne:aology While (he father of phenomenology, Edmund Husser!. spent Huh: time discussing gendeted experiences. much less pregnancy, he did say that I experience pregnancy through the teleology of all monads.l In this frag- ment, Hussed acknowledges the difficulty he has as a man understanding birth. However, he concludes that since teleology encompasses ill! monads, pregnancy would also necessarily be brought imo the fold ofphenomenol- ogy. As Johanna Oksalanotes, such acutsOr)'view upholds the universalizing tendency in Husse:rl's phenomenology; phenomenology as astOOy that docs trot take into account the contingencies ofhistory. class. ma::, ot gender.2 284 • T....l. \V1.!1u. of pregnancy draw inspiration from the more embodied philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponry. Merleau-Ponty's masterpiece, Phenomenology ofPrrception {1945). is ofren read as an existentialist revision ofEdmund Husserl's transcerulencai phenomenology, Alongside Martin Heldegger's Bring tmd 1'ime (1927). Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943). and. Simont' de Beauvoir's The Sec"""Sex (1949), Phfflom",.1Dgy ofPm,!tion explores how a careful phenomenology ceUs Uli (hat phenomenology's point of departure has not only methodolOgical implications but also philosophical ones. Medeau. Ponty famously indicates in the preface that Husserl too realized that "1l1e most: important lesson which the reduction teaches us is (he impossibility of a complete reduction."} Since I must always s~r( from my 1ocated. bis- tori.caL cukural, and embodied experience, rfind that while a phenomenõ logical exploration can clarify my experience. it cannot transcend ft, Thus. phenomenology can provide us with generalizations but nO( with universal truths that stand outside the human, embodied condition. However~ despite Merleau-Ponty's appeal to phenomenologists who wish to address pregnancy as one ofthe important lacunae in Western philoso- phy, Merleau-Ponty has been critiqued fot having a gendet-neutral phe. nomenoiogy. Hl.. accOUfi( is seen to pass over important differences in ell:lbodied expedence and thus co fail to capture our lived experience fully. Linda Fisher summarizes rills critique: An .at:count that filils to recognize that its descriptions omit parr.i(::u- 1arities of women's experience, such as pregnant embodiment, be- trays (be underlying (mascuHnisr) assumpfion that the generic (male) account sets the standard and encompasses all possibilities, and in this manner functions to diminish and marginalize the experiencc and perspective'S ofwomen.4 Feminist works dw: highlight differences in female emboditnent illustratc how Merleau~Ponry's work seems deVQjd ofconsidering diverse gendered experiences. It is crue tbat his most" famous works do not contain careful comparison ofgendefed experience, But [ have argued elsewhere that his lectures in cl\ild psychology and pedagogy do explore the experience of pregnancy seriously and carefully.s In a critical vein, Shannon Sullivan atgues that Merleau-Ponty and ocher phenomenologists fail to accUCately portray out true existential con- dition since they describe the body in "neutral" terms. Unless Medeau- Pont}' is describing a pathological embodied condition. such as Schneider's. The OrdcrofUfe _ 285 1 the body in the Phmomtnology has no distinguishing gender traits. This reHects a continuation of the Western philosophical tradition of assum* ing a universal experience lies at the core of all diverse human embodi- ments and thus eliminates the philosophical need for careful discussions of difference. Sullivan claims that Merleau-Ponty's body passes over the determining effects of"gender, sexuality, class, race, age, culture, national- ity, individual experiences and upbringing, and more" and hence his body becomes a "solipsistic subject's monologue."6 Fisher makes the same argu- ment, saying that: As such. it is argued that lived experience, especially bodily lived experience, cannot be treated in a generic analysis: bodies are sexed, and individuals are gendered, to follow the well-known feminist dis- tinction of sex and gender. This points then to the irreducible par- ticularity ofwomen's experience that, it is argued, phenomenology has ignored? Merleau-Ponty's work in the Phenommology ofPerception does concern itself most famously with embodiment rather than the effects of history, class, language, race, and gender. Does a feminist who is concerned with lack of attention to female experience in Merleau-Ponty's most famous works find herself with the task of correcting this problem by continuing the spirit, if not the practice, of Merleau-Ponty's work, or is she now re- quired to call into question phenomenology in its entirety? One conclusion is that there is not a problem in principle with a Mecleau- Pontian phenomenology, hut rather a problem with Merleau-Ponty's aecu- tion. What Merleau-Ponty outlines in the Pherwmm%gy ofPeruption is a valuable method to explore gendered experience, even if he failed to ac- complish such an undertaking. Gail Weiss and Silvia Stoller additionally point out that Sullivan's critique of Merleau-Ponty is based in a serious misreading.s Sullivan equates Merleau-Ponty's discussion of"anonymous" with "nemral" and then critiques Merleau-Ponty as offering a gender-neutral, and hence insensitive, analysis ofembodiment. Stoller and Weiss point out that Merleau-Ponty does provide room for considering race, class, and gender. His entire approach is deeply defined by the necessity of taking into account the complexities of the situation and not seeing bodies as "neutral" entities that float above their environmental COntexts. "To say that an experience operates anonymously, then, is not equivalent to saying that it is universal or that it is trans-historical."9 The promise of Merleau-Ponty's work has naturally inspired. feminist phenomenologists because his approach to lived experience works against the disembodied, universalizing tendencies in Husser!' Oksala notes that 286 • T.Ua Welsh most feminist appropriations of phenomenology have opted for the Merleau-Pontian version. which builds upon the premise that com- plete reduction to transcendental consciousness is impossible. This is generally interpreted to mean that the phenomenological investiga- tion must focus on the lived body as opposed to transcendental consciousness.10 Attention toward the lived body in feminist theory shows that a "one size fits all n phenomenology fails to live up to its very promise of truly starting from experience. Indeed, careful anention to our experience would reveal the manner in which our gender, for instance, impacts our cognition, our intersubjective life, and our encounters with the world. One of the most famous pieces in feminist scholarship that arises from and reacts to Merleau-Pomy is Iris Marion Young's "Throwing Like a Girl." Therein, Young notes that due to the ways in which women are raised. valued, and situated in society, feminine embodiment "exhibits an ambigu- ous transcmdrnce, an inhibited intentionality, and a discontinuous unity with its surroundings."" We have not been socialized to take the world as our theater, to extend our bodies without question into the world, to take up space. Instead, we quescion our actions before we accomplish them; we worry about how we look, if it is acceptable, and thus become stilted and uncomfortable in our very embodied existence. Young's work shows us a way to engage in a culturally, historically, and socially sensitive phenom- enological analysis ofour embodiment. Phenomenologies oEPregnancy Within the lectures on child psychology and pedagogy that he gave from 1949 to 1952 at the Sorbonne, Maurice Merleau.Ponty discusses the expe- riential transformation that occurs during pregnancy. Heavily influenced by the psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch's two*volume to::t 1he Psychology of Womm: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation (1944-45), Merleau-Ponty sees pregnancy as a time of extreme ambivalence for the mother.12 Pregnancy evokes the pregnant woman's pre-existing conflicts with her mother, her husband. her other children, and her situation in a sexist society. While the sources of conflict are seen largely through the psychoanalytic lens of Deutsch's psychology of women, Merleau-Ponry also draws some general existential themes from pregnant embodiment. In the lecture "The Adult's View of the Child,n Merleau.Ponty argues that pregnancy is a "major mystery" that brings the pregnant woman to "the order of life," adding, "During the entirety of her pregnancy, the The O.nler of Life _ 287 1 woman is living a major mystery which is neither the order of matter nOT the order of the mind, but, rather. tJu ordu oilifo,"u Pregnancy disrupts the woman's existence as a sdf-enclosed individual and thus threatenS phe- nomenology. which sees the ground of phil(rsophy as It philosophy of the subje<:t, The "'order oflife" bring$ her both an expanded experience as wen as being the source of extreme ambivalence due to the loss of the unity of se1fhood. 1he idea ofan order oflife that stands in the background of the subjective pen::eprual experience foreshadows Merleau~Ponty's larer work on Resh. While most feminist embodiment theorists that draw upon preg- nant experience do not appeal to his Sorbonne lectutes in chUd psychol- ogy, roost d-o draw attention to the themes of flesh and intertwining in Merleau-Ponty'slate work. One of tne most cdebrated diSl;I,1..'{.dons regarding Meneau-Ponty and pregnancy comes not from his own work. but from Luce lrigaray's discus- ,ion in 71u: Ethier tt/&xual Diff=nc" Thercin, lrig>tar ti<s he, thought on the binory of philosophy to Merleau-Ponty and argues tbar he did not realize the real significa nee ofhis phenomenology. His oculocentrism can be seen to "blind" Merleau-Ponty to "'jnteruterioe life."'" What Merleau- Poory refers to' as "the order of iife" could be understood in Irigaray's 1an- guag<: as {he need for philosophy to go bac.:k and reconsider irs roots in prediscu rsive experience: My reading and my interpretation of the history of philosophy agree with Merleau.Pomy: we must go hack to a moment ()f prediscursive experience, recommence everything, aU the categories by which we understand things, the world. subject~objec.r divisions, recommence everything and pause at me "mystery, as famiHar as it is unexplained. of a light which, illuminating the teit. remains at its source in OOs<:urity,"t'S Gron di.scusses how Irigaray presents us with a mood where Merlcau~ Ponty is in debt to femininity and maternitybecause the tactile underli.nes the visual. Merleau-Ponry's very oomxpmal founda:tinn5 are based in "fem- ininity and maternity, a debt whore symptoms reside in the kind of lan- guage of pregnancy he continually invokes to articulate the emergence: of that torsion within the Resh that constitutes and unites {he seer and the visible."161hus it is not just that pregnancy is a subject area that can and should be diS(;ussoo by phenomenology, but that pregnancy is at the heart of the phenomenological project. By focusing upon prediscursive experience. "maternaliziog flesh," lriga- ray c:a1ls to our imaginations the experience ofbcing in utero. This common gtound to aU our experiences can be secn as a critical expansion upon 288 • Tdia Wdillb phenomenological ehemes outlined in Merleau~Pomy. Su(:b <l psychoanaly~ sis ofnur lived experience broadens phenOmeMJogy since je demands that we take into acrounr not only a discusmon ofthe bisroricai. cultural, social. and political milieu in which the pregnant woman is: situatt:d, but also a ~Jopmentai account of her experience induding conflicts that cannot be exposed by traditional phenomenological methods. In lrigaray and in othee feminist adoptionsofMerleau-Ponry's philoso- phy, we find a common theme rhat inherent within Merleau-Ponty's work the seeds of a more nuanced philosophy of experience exist. He failed to see ot did not live tong enough to fulfill the promise ofhis own ideas. lriga.ray addtesses Merleau~Ponty's refusal to see how Rem is simared in "a mater- nal, maternalizing fu:sh, reproduction. subsistence there of the amniotic. placental tissue. which enveloped subject and things prior to birth, O£ of ttndemess and the milieu that constiruted the atmosphere of the nursling~ the infant. still Qf the aduk"17 Thus, we return to the subject noc as an embodied being living with other such beings, but as part of a conrinuum of existence tWX is bmind the categories ofsuhject. perception, visibility. and invisibility. We find here rhe first revision tn a traditional account of the subject, A phenomenology ofpregnancy exposes how the historical fact ofour prenã tal life is philosophically significant. OUt life in utero IS not autonomous or disctete. This. is. not merely a historical fact. but such primary experience remains also primary in adult life, 'lhus, any account ofthe human subject would have (0 reconsider its designation of human life as an independent monad. When we turn. to the pregnant woman's experience, we find additional critiques of the traditional conception of tlu:: subject. Iris Marion. Young's "Pregnant Embodiment" departs "from tlte pregnant subject's view~ point."IS Therein she 6nds a split in her subjectivity. her inner movements hcinng 00 ."",her being. her bodily hounduies .hili: during the manifuld transfOrmations, What this splitting causes is a disruption in the rranspar~ mt unity of the .df. From this description. Young returns to the thoory of Merleau-Ponty in dte Phnwmenol.ogy t(Per«ptkJn, where Merleau-Ponty admittedly pruvides us with an embodIed. rather than a dualist, visio-n, however as Young points out, this embodied self is still a unified. self. Young stresses hQW pregnancy disrupts the II integrity of my body" because "in pregnancy I do not have a firm sense ofwhere my body ends and the world begins." When her pregnant belly bumps up against her legs. Young is aware of this body and is aw-.lre it is not aU hers anymore:. She argues against Mer1eau.Ponty's suggestions that such objectification ofone's body is negative. Instead, she argues that in such a moment it is not that her ;~i The Orde" oflJfe • 289 1 -- - -- - -- - -- -----body has become an object. but she is rather «conscious of the physkality of my body not as an object. but as the material weight that I am in rnoven1.enc,"19 Young appeaIs to che work of KtistcV<I, Lacan. and Derrida as better models to explain the split subjc<:r. Imponantly, Young's <lecount, while in parts consistent with such deconscructive and psychoanalytic accounts of a splir subject, i~ derived not from a rejection of phenomenology as being able to accept a split subject, but from a phenomenological description it~ sd£ Instead of seeing phenomenology as inherently rio;{ to a model of me subject as self~encfos.ed, sdf~conscious, and unified, as mnny post$tructur- alist and psychoanaJyric theorists arc likely to do. Young finds within preg- nant experience a suhject who is nO( just a subject. She writeS that the pregnant woman is both "source and participant in a crea[ive proa:Ss."lli Young's work thus draws her to the «order of life" in Merlea\l~Ponty's tetrnSt or in Irigaray's our "prcdiscursive experience." Rosalyn Diaprose argues that Young's work shows that "pregnancy, to return to the body in que$tion, involves profound. chang<:$ to bodHy capacities. shape and tex- ture with attendant shifc:s in tbe awareness of the OOdy. Yet, .as Young ar- gues. pregnancy can he better understood a.~ an expansion in the boniers of the self than a colJapse of its structure."21 This is similar to the idea in Merleau-Pontythat the "order oflife" is not something opposed to the self. as the body as object (or Kfuper) is. but in$tead the plac::e 1n which the self nnds itsdflocated. Othcr phen.l)menoiQgiGs of pregnaut.), have teodeJ to miniruiu (he lan- guage ofsplittIng seeing it a.'> tOO red.uctive and negadve, 1n favor ofa post.. tive vjew of the collapse of the boundaries ofselfand Other as weU as self and workl. For instance, Gail Weiss writes of her own pregnancy as an experience tbat is defined not by ambivalence but rather by expansion: ""Fluidity and expansiveness, rather than tbe myths ofwholenffi: and dõ $Ure (which I don't bdieve any ofus, male or female, ever truly experience) were the tangible signs of this newly discovered bodily integrity."u Lih~ wise, in her discussion of her pregnancy) Carol Bigwood argues that Me:rkau-Poflty's phenomenology ofthe body recovers a "'nonculruralt non- linguistic body.":t3 She calls fur a "'world.~eartb~home" as the site of this nonpersonal body. Bigwood, like many feminist theorjsrs influenced by Merleau-Ponty, disagrees with Judith Butler's characterization in GttnIler Troubk of bodies as cultural tigns. With such a view, we reinforce the notion that we are alienated from nature, and that culture stands prior to, over, or against nature. Bigwood admowiedges that Butkr is right to "argue that: there is nD 'pure' body or untouched nature prior to culture." But Bigwood criti2!J(J • Talia Wel.... cize$ Budet for making the opposite miStake, fOr assc:.rllu~ WillI; A ...... ...-. "pure" culture that would always be present, "'1he female experience of pregnancy, childbjrth, and breas(~feeding perspicaciously shows up a fe~ male bodily wisdom and fleshly openne&s that intertwines with a mother's personal and cultura! life.'" Turning our attention tOWard our everyday I:'xperiencJ!, we nnd the "nonpersonaJ perceptual exi:ltt:nce that underlies and intertwines with our personal cultural and jntcl1~tual1ives."24 Our second. revision of traditional accounts ofthe human subject is tbat a phenomenology of pregnancy from the pregnant woman's experience indicates that me human subject is not ne<:eSSarHy genderless or unified, Instead, we find a subject that is either charncterized as "'split," as in Young. or as O)O(inuous with a latger continuum ofljfe, as in Bigwood. and Weiss. As summarir.ed briefly befOre, these: descriptions appear to develop tbe idea that a cbaracterization of the human subject as autonomous, autono- mous, rational, genderless. unified, and discre«: is not philosophically suf- ncient.lnstead our ex:perlence is grounded upon a continuous, i.ndeterminatc. prcojscunive experience that subtends aU individual experience, Many see the work in fernini.sr embodiment theory on pregnant phenomenology as fuHimng Merleau-Ponty's late promise of "flesh" and "wild being." In ex~ ptaining dte importance of these ideas, Grou writes that we can nnd in Me:rIeau~Pontr "a 'wild being,' and unculrivate'd or raw sensibility" and this is found in prediscurtiive experience "'before the overlay of reRection, before the imposition of metaexperientiaI organization and its codification by reason."25 Yet, it seems that lrigaray's prcdiscumve life, Young's split subject, Weiss's expansiveness, Bigwood'$. nonpersonaJ, and MerJeau~Ponty's order of life are aU desct"iptions that could be universally true ror all human experience. Thus we retum to the three qw:sdons we brought up in the introduction. What is the relevance ofthese lK-OOunts for our philosophy? Do they revise a general account ofthe human subject, but leave jn place tbe cenuality an existential phenomenorogy? Do they call upon us (Q replace our pbenom~ enology with another kind ofan.a.lysis ofexperience? The Subject Rejected Even if we start with a more sensitive interpretation Q[ the manifuld ways in which our embodiment is constituted by social. politicaL and histotical [on:es. we still seem to be providing a general theory that would apply to aU human experieru:e and thus appear to be: retUrning again to a generic account. Thus, gender becomes a kind of additional concern that we add onto OW' previous philosophkal conceptions. such as: the idea rhat the way TheOrutoflli-e _ 291 to overcome dualism is to add the body to our preexisting quaJi:!lcadons of what a subject is. Ifthis is: the oontribution ofgender~sensitive scholarship to phenomenology, it is not a slight one, After al~ providing complete phe- nomenological accounts ofgendered experience is no small task. Howevet, ir appears dearly that the desire offeminist phenomenologists and phe- notnenologies of pregnanc), is to indicate rhe spccHidty of experience against the tendency of generic phenomenologists account to absorb aU criticisms as merdy suggestions ofadditional areas for phenomenology ro explore (bue ehe idea remains that such criticisms do not dueatcn the ph~ nOrhenologicai project's universalizing rendencles). While rhe fact that oue common experience is being 1n utero, preg- nancy is a parricularly difficult experience to absorb into a universali'l1ng account, since the experience is foreclosed for men and not a pan ofevery woman's life. Oksala :argues rhar pregnancy gives us "a need to rethink such fundamental phenomenological questions as the possibility of a purely eidetic phenomenology and. the limits of egologkaI sensc- constiwtion."26 'lhe provocative idea of~n "order oflife'" was obviously not revealed to Merleau~Ponry through his. own pregnant embodiment. When discussing the condition of women, Beauvoir wrote that "the most sympa- thetic of men never fully comprehend woman's concrete situation."2? Can a person who has fiever been pregnant undecsrand the concrete reality of pregnant embodiment? Many experiences are difficult, if nor impossible, to convey to others who have not shared in them. Experiencing the death ofa loved one, flying an airplane, hal1ucinacing j haVing religious conversion. and fighting a chronic illness appear to demand having had the experience to be truly understood. A sufficient number of parallels to common experience do not seetn available to draw a sketch ofwhat hallucination is "Uk:e\'> tu someone who has not had one. Pregnancy might be: a kind oflimit~experience that refutes the subject, embodied or not, as a universal concept with wh1d:t to explore our human condition. The idea of a limit-experiencc lS taken from Michel Foucault. His dis- cussion ofHmit experience is ofren tied to his own personal stories of tak- ing add in. the Mohave and engaging in sadomasochism. In James Miller's controversial biography of Foucault, be explores how cetttt'<lI such experi- ences were to undemanding the deV'elopment of Foucault's thought.28 Foucault discussed limit experienct.! as cootrastecl wirh phenomenology. noting that phenomenology ttkd. to "'atg;uliu p<!rception'" and "grasp me significance ofdaily experience in order 10 reaffirm the fundamtttw clut~ acter ofehe subject.'" Instead of this limited> unimaginative, Cartesian ap- proach~ Foucault celebrates the philosophies of Nietzsche. Bataillc, and 192 • TaU. Weldr ... Blanchot. who "tty through experience to reach chat point of life which lies as close as possible to the impO$$lbility of living, which lies at the limit or extreme," [n GO doing, we can sec a path to "'tearing' rhe subject from itSelf in such a way that it is no longer the subject as such. ot thu it is completely 'other' than iudf so that it may .arrive at its annihilation, its dissociation."It In Foucault, the idea oflimit -experience is ooe thar is "internal'" insofar as it is an experience a subject has {hac includes the caste, if not reality. of the subject's -own dissolution, The splitting that ¥oungspeaks about, or the expansiveness 1n Weiss. or lrig:aray's maternalizing flesh could be seen as pointing toward a dissolution ofthe sdf-other distinction and hence could be a limi(~experjence fOr the pregnant woman. While it is true that (he mctaphor of death and annihilation is present in Foucault, Bataifle, and Blanchor's dhcussions of limit-experience. rather that birth and creaeion, Iimit.-el!"perience captures the idea ofpregnancy being both a roOtedly lived experience, something accessible only through a consideradon of that ex- perience, but}ltt something tbat defies the traditional knowledge that expe- rience is something "owned" or "had" by a subject "about" or "'directed tÕ ward" an object. Thus, a limit~experience can be viewed as very much a lived "experience" but not the experiCI\4.:e of traditional phenomenology, If we are to reject the suhject as the center of OUI phenomenological inquiries, it seems difficult eo know what' the place ofa descriptive philoso. phy such as phenomenology now is, As a philosopher. I can meaningfully capture: the sense of Descarres in his dressing gown or Husserl considering trees and birds in ehe garden,30 Bur BataiUe's discussion of taking eroticism to its ends in sadomasochistic practic;:es is less approachable,31 One is the standard armchair philosophy and the ocher transgres.sive, but it is more critical not that one is morc or less SOcially aa.:eptable, but that armchair philosophy is dccrsrihk. Leaving aside ehe important critiques of the phe- nomenological tradition's oculocentri~m, most persons can consider me key lessons in a Slatic phenomenology. While it is feasible to consider the cel- ebration of intense, forbidden. and transgressive behaviors in BataHIc and Fouatult as kJnd of a pop psychology ofJiving life to its fullest. the limit* experiences push the boundaries of access eo philosophy and are nO{ just na rratives ofradical behavior. They :tfe indications ofwhat cannot he open to all and indkations of the Bmits of traditional phenomenological Inquiry. Unlike an argument that presents us: with a eheory of why we should reject the idu ofthe uniry ofthe subject, a Urnie~experience provides us with a concrete tes[of those limits, It' communicates without: abstract ioedlectual theruy, It is possible that the content of any experience is always-already The Onlu ofLife • 2!J3 Ii ~ lOst in the abstract philosophizing experience. "Ihe idea that pregnan<."y is a limit~experience might help to highlight the potential relevance of an experience that cannot he circumscribed by a traditional phenorru::nologi~ cal inquiry, but [hat appeauln in heart deeply wedded to lived.-cxperience. As such. we can see the idea. of pregnancy as a limit-experience as continu~ ous with the spirit. if not the execution, of a Merleau-Pontian inspired embodiment theory and harmonious with (he chalbtnging descriptions of split~subject, earth-wodd~homc. maternal flesh, and an eKpaMtd self out~ lined in phenomenologies of pregnancy. Limit-experiences can function as way in which to consider an experi- ence that tests the boundaries of our sub;ect-ceruered philosophy. But at the same time. unlike a descriptive phenomenology ofperception, a Jimir- expel.'ience seems to require a kind of initiation that can appeat impos- sible to enter. We can consider Descartes's writing desk quice deatly and follow the line of his argument through his description. But we cannot follow Foucault's Mojave Desert experience in c~ sam~ fashion. Going the desert and taking acid will not necessarily provide us with Foucault"s in- sights whereas reilocting upon whether ot not we are dreaming does provide us with Descartes's. If we adopt this idea that pregnancy ill 3 kind oflirnit~ experience that indicates the limits of a general phenomenological ap- proach. it: mighr appear that we have lost phenomenology, a daim to which Foucault presents a sympathetic defense" Would we then be left with truths accessible only to pregnant women? Or is the pOint that pregnant experi~ ence simply deuroys the .subject, embodied or not, as the place from which phenomenology should depart? The Subject ReviS«! The idea that pregnancy might call upon us to reject the subject and its centrality in phenomenology allows phenomenologists to think outside some of ou.r traditional Language and possibly to incorporate more of the variety of experience in our descripdons. However, the idea of a limit- experience outside ofthe subject paradoxically createS a greater isolation of experience within the suhjecr instead offreeing our discussion from subject- cemtn::d philosophies. Feminist thought about revising the idea of the sLlbject in considering gendtred-txperience is far more fruitful than jetti- soning tne project of phenomenology in its entirety. We should be careful (0 not tbrow dlC baby out with (be bathwater. If limit-exper1ences are nor accessible to a phenomenological analysis, they operate without possibility ofquestioning, without me possibility of analysis, and without the possibility of suggesting political change. I 294 • T"'1.a Welsh ,

cannot access the omcr's limir~experience ifshe tefuses any validity to any ofmy tentative :u:rempts at understanding. 'Ihe more she rejects the idea of ner experience being accessible through any kind of phenomenology~ the more tightly she restticts it to berself. But even within hersdf, she is also excluded from knowing her experience. It operates like a peculiar kind of internal God whose mysteries are in principle unknown to the very person engaged in a limit-experience and certainly foredosed to any "'outsiders." Given this mysterlous veil. it ,seems impoSSible to considet sw;h experiences as revealing things as concrete and immediate as our social and political world, our personal histories. or our cultural nouns. While pregnmt em- bodiment pushes the limits ofuaditiona1 phenomenological language. this tension does oot ~re us to: adopt an even more inaccessible language that further separates us from concrete engagement with our lived experience. We find a richer language in phenomenologies ofpregnancy themselves that call upon us to mlise, rather than reject, our t:heor1es of the subject. Weiss points out that the expansiveness she feels in pregnancy IS a senSe of "6uidiry and expansiveness" rather than "wholeness and dosure. n31 She also parenthetically comments that she does nO( believe mac any ofus, male or female, experience wholeness and closure. Thus perhaps the truth of preg- nancy is a deeper, all-too-human truth chat is obscured by our linguistic and historical tendency to COI\sidec human experience at base a subjective, unified, self-enclosed sphere. The revised subject tin well wirhin the embodiment traditjon. The myths ofwholelltSS and closure could stem from an overinvestment in the separ~ areness or at least the pdmacy of a disembodied mind. But once dualism is left bchiJ1d us, attention to our c:vcry<iay experience will reveal that we an! unable to extril;ate our "mind" as sol'l1etning distinct from the living body. Turning toward our embodied existence, we find a basil; experience that JS; much more continuous with the rest of che 'World and the resc of other human beings. We can revise a traditional conception of the human subject as being defined through mental characteristics--auronomous, rational, genderless. unified, and discrete-and explore a subjccr defined through its existential. embodied, and all..f:OÕbuman experience. Merlcau-Ponty writes that viewing any experience as a combination of a machi.,.lilre physical body and a ,ouJ.-like mind is thoroughly discred- ited by both our philosophy and science, The argument that substance dualism is wrong is hardly n<wel or rardy appreciated. Most philosophers willing to consider the: relevance of phenotncnology would almost surely .agree that the mind and body are not tWO metaphysically distinct sub~ stances. But beyond noting their rwcessary connection, Merleau~Ponty's embodiment theory points out that what moving beyond dualism. means The Order otL1£c • 2!J5 is returning to ex:istetlCe and nOt seeing the body as added onto the mental. "'The union of soul and body is not an amalgamation between tWQ mutu~ ally external terms, subject and object, brought about by arbitrary dect~. Ie is eMcted at every instant in the movement ofexistence.""3l if the poiru: ofoverromingdualism was me:relytO suggest that we need to say the mind and body are connected. we 'WOuld need to go no further than Descartes, since he noted the complexity oftheir connection in the sixth. Meditation. The idea ofembodiment theory is not jUst to add "'having a body" onro our list of essential. characteristics of the human subject, hut to suggest that embodiment is prior to aU of the other characteristics. It is not an addition but a revision of the philosophical account of the human subject. Preg- nancy is a clear manner in which to bring this truth to the forefront by noting that phenomeoologies of pregnancy indicate the primacy ofem~ hodiment over a sdf..enclosed mental ex.perience: and. also remind us dlat our first experiences are ones of inseparableness from our toothers in utero. Yet. while the idea of reyuing the concept: ofthe subject toward a more embodied. inclusive onc fits weil within the tradition outlined by Mer1eau~ Ponty in the Phenommoklgy o/Pmeption, it seems to not quite ~ptute the uniqueness ofpr~gnant embodiment. After all. it appears that we ('oul<l come to this condmion of intaCOnnectt'dness via a wide attay of experl~ ences. We can ask along: with Oksala iffrom such a perspective feminist pheooll1enoiogies of pregnancy and birth just "add some missing des;;:rip- tions of embodiment to the phenomenological project" but they fall to "change the core mit in anyessemial way."34 1hus, they fall to live up to the (;hallenges of reminist philowphy to the tradition. Fisher write.~ that feminist phenomenology searches to go beyond the "generic human experience." "To the extent that the: objea-ive is to provide an account ofessences or essential scructUf'eS. pbenomenologytends {O the: generi~ dacription, treating experience generically, as pertaining to a ge- neric human individuaL"'¥.! Fisher goes on to point oUt that this is often taken as problematic by feminists who want to engage with difference, inequality, and oppression. When pregnancy's specificity is removed and one draws out general phenomenological condusions about our conne<:* don to the world and others, then it seems we have returned to a generic phenomenology simply through a different source. Thus, fhinkers s:uch as Elh:ah«h Grosz and Rosalyn Diaprose employ embodimenr theory not as a "natural" place uutside of the con6ngencies of $QCiã histOtkal. political, and cu1tural forces, bur as a site wherein we: can see how female subordination plays out in female (and male) embodi- ment. Sensitive to such concerns, Okula cautions us against the: dangers: of a artatn brand of Merleau-Pondan embodiment theory in feminist 296 • TaittW~kh theory. what she calls the "corporeal reading," btxause it reduces phenom~ enology down it> a kind ofessentialism. It threatens "to push u.s back into defending a form ofoorporeaJ essentialism tbat potentially precludes p0- litical changes in the situation ofwomen." In the corpoteal reading. ,ftc focus on the body removes it from.a more complex social-political under- standing ofgender-~the fa,' that the rocus on the body is simply tOO limited a framework to :mpporr a philosophical understanding ofgemier."3<l We can ask if JUd. d.lstuss*!011s ofa continuum ofLlfi:: revealed byexamin- ing pregnant:y or all ofour prenatallik faUs intO a type ofcocporeal reading where we do explore the embodied condition more fully and cenainly more gcndered experiences, but now they pass over important social. cul- rural, and historical diiferences and fall into an almost romantic, "'natural- ist" reading of the human subject. Feminist phenomenology provides us a way to acknowledge the relevance ofexperience io political discussions, but the question has been raised. ifit is sufficient to futl addtess the sociaL pollckal. cultural. and linguistic context. Does a focus on embodiment encourage a lack ofserious engage- ment with these issues? There are two possible aspectS to this concern. One is to suggest tbat without phenomenology, one cannot diagnose the ways in whiclt women's bodies have beootne oonstituted. Without an appeal to how gender and power relations draw around ideologies of gender shape our experience. we cannot properly understo.nd our emboditmnt. The other aspect is to suggen that without phenomenology, we cannot curt! gender irnbaJances, In Volr:tilt Bodies. Elizabeth Grosz explores this reminn. An exhaustive exploration ofembodiment would. at least in POI" if not in full, reveal po- lidc.al. cultural, and soc~l tensions. Ie is impossible to discuss female embodiment without considering how women's bodies are modified, disci~ plined, celebrated. and bkuned. As awealth ofllte:ature including tiunously Susan Bordo's Unbtllt'abk Weight, has documented, in the West. oontem~ porary women', bodies are obj«ti.6.ed and controlled through a micropo- ticing ofsize. Grosz also explores the notion that not only are discussions ofbodies inevltahly discussions ofpower, politics, and knowiedges, SO: roo is the: phenomenological project of working from experienC(:. "But it is clear that experience cannot be taken as an unproblematic given. a pomion through which one can judge knowkdges. for experience is ofcQUtSt im- plicated in and produced by various knowledges and social pracrices,'" Bur Grosz continues to point oue that a phenõnoIogyofexperience is needed to provIde (he point ofdeparture fur chaUenging any given knowledge or instItution: "Nevertheless. I would contend that withQut some acknowl- edgement of the formative role of experience in the esfablishment of 'fhe Order of Lik • 297 ~~"" ..~....uõ. J.t:llUUIIUU H<u tlU gruunus Uool wnJC!l ro (llSpUtC patnarcnat norms,"3] We can see a fammfS and clear example of how we can explore embodi- ment without ignoring the sodal, political. cultural world by reading; Iris: Marion Young"s "Throwing Like a Girl" in conjunction with «Throwing Like a Girl Twenty Years Later." FeminiS'f embodinu:nt theory is not doomed to be essentialist and incapable of discussing the way in which socia! and ,PQlickaJ changes affect experience. Young's "Throwing Like a Girl» demonstrates that a phenome=:nological exploration of gendered em- bodiment is not necessarily essentialist. ifby es.sentiatist one means rondi- tioned by biologically given differences. [ndeed. the piece would not be sensible without understanding the larger cultural world and how it shapes and mQlds tcmale embodiment. Young's latter piece, "Thwwingllkea Girl: TwenryYearsLarer," provides examples ofhow social progress has positively changed. female embodi- ment. Young note=:.s that much has changed in her bodily comportment and that of her daughter, born two years after "'Throwing Like: A Girl" fits{' appeared. "It seems to me that she and her friends move=: and carry them~ selves with much more openness, more reach. more active confidence, than many of my generadon did." The hesitation ofYoung in throwing a ball versus her daughu:r's active enjoyment ofsports illunrares: that a phenom~ enology of embodiment is by no means static. Young comment~ that her original piece might see women as too oppressed.. too obje«ified. as: "in- hibited., hesitant. constrained, gazed at, and poSitioned." Young accepts that her depiction in "'Throwing Like a Girl" etnphasized the wa}"i in which women are t~tticted and judged according to a universal masculine standard, and she writes that one might "'also IQok for specificallyvaiuable aspccu ofwomen's experience." It would be these val.uabk aspects ofwom~ en's experience that could provide the politicat grounds to reject limiting structures. While Young does acknowledge that the explQration ofwom- en's experience might aid out political go.als. she also emphasizcs that "a primary feminist task must continue to be exposing and critid:rlng thevio- knee. overwork. and sexual exploitation that many women suffer as women."!IflThis brings to ligbt that we cannot approach oorexistence from a disembodied, nonphenomeoologkal approach where one looks as bodies and how they are tn=ated from the outSide. undersullding embodimrot is required to right certain wrongs. Many have argued that the focus on embodiment in :a more Merleau- Ponnan phenomenology bener lives up to the promise: of phC1l()~gy as it descriptive philowphy. Thus. the argument that one needs to account ror class. history, gender. and race is not a political. principle that is imposed 298 • Tali" Wel..h trom withour on phenomenology, but that a careful phenomenological discussion shows that phenomenology is ideally disposed. coward a more historical, and politically progreSSive, analysis. The preceding discussion has m.tstratrn that a feminist embodiment theory is attuned to differences in phenomenological descripdollS and seeks to avoid condensing embodied experience into a natural is[, nonpolitical mold. The OrdeJ; of IJfe • 2.9SI '...l<.-,.l",~,.".i" .-_ ........