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PHILOSOPHY AND THE MATERNAL BODY Philosophy and the Maternal Body is one of the first full-length studies to properly consider the relationship between philosophy and the maternal body. Michelle Boulous Walker investigates one of the key questions in contemporary feminist theory: how are we to understand the silence of the feminine voice in Western thought? Philosophy and the Maternal Body gives a new voice to the mother and the maternal body which have often been viewed as silent within philosophy. Michelle Boulous Walker clearly shows how some male theorists have appropriated maternity and suggests new ways of articulating the maternal body and women’s experience of pregnancy and motherhood. Drawing on rich examples such as Plato’s allegory of the cave, the “productive man” of Marx’s philosophy, Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein’s writing and the psychoanalytic and feminist insights of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray, the author calls into question some of the ways in which women have been traditionally constructed as silent in relation to philosophy. This book also draws upon the work of Louis Althusser and Jean-Fraçois Lyotard—figures often overlooked in feminist theory—and clearly shows how their work bears importantly on the significance of the maternal body. Throughout, Michelle Boulous Walker questions the assumption that silence must necessarily mean the absence of language and presents highly and compelling new strategies for understanding how silence operates. Philosophy and the Maternal Body is an invaluable study of the crucial significance of the maternal body in philosophy and is essential reading for all those in gender studies, feminist philosophy, psychoanalytic studies and literature. Michelle Boulous Walker is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Queensland. PHILOSOPHY AND THE MATERNAL BODY Reading silence Michelle Boulous Walker London and New York First published 1998 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1998 Michelle Boulous Walker All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Walker, Michelle Boulous, 1959– Philosophy and the maternal body: reading silence/ Michelle Boulous Walker. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Feminist theory. 2. Motherhood. I. Title. HQ1190.W34 1998 305.42'01–dc21 97–30381 ISBN 0-203-00687-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20914-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-16857-0 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-16858-9 (pbk) FOR JOSEPHINE AND JAMES a dilemma that regularly besets and vexes feminist studies—will we be mothers or daughters? The mother’s daughter or the father’s? Can we be both at once? Mothers of daughters, of sons? Indeed, how many permutations of these positions are possible? And what is politically at stake in each? Can they be altogether avoided? What does mother mean? What does daughter mean? Is there a paradigm other than the familial one from which we can more productively or at least comfortably speak and write, live? (Michèle Longino Farrell, Performing Motherhood: The Sévigné Correspondence) v CONTENTS Acknowledgements x Introduction 1 PART I Reading silence 7 1 9 Speaking silence: wom