Abstract
This article discusses the Conservative Laestadian women’s desire to mother and the procreational ethos of the Conservative Laestadian religious movement in the framework of reproductive justice and ecological crisis. The data draws from my doctoral study in which I examined the aspirations of women who belonged in the Conservative Laestadian religious revival movement in Finland. In my attempt to understand the Laestadian women’s desire to mother within the procreational ethos of this conservative religion, and to form an alternative approach to the issue in feminist ethico-ecological framework, I employ Donna J. Haraway’s concept of response-ability together with Bracha L. Ettinger’s theory of matrixial feminine transconnectivity. With this article, I propose that in their multivocality, diversity, and intertwined nature, the Laestadian women’s accounts of motherhood assist in understanding the many aspirations, intentions, agencies, and affects that operate within the desire to mother in this conservative religious movement. The Laestadian women’s diverging accounts enable us to consider motherhood as a manifold issue for a pious woman: a natural duty and an obligation, but also a position through which to claim the status of a subject. This invites us to think of the Laestadian women’s desire to mother more broadly as an entangled ethics of relationality, care, and kin-making beyond human reproduction. To promote a response-able approach to the issue of the desire to mother on the edge of the ecological disaster, we must address the unquestioned transgenerational and procreational models of motherhood and how these complicate the discussion on the reproductive rights of religious female subjects in the Western world. However, as the desire to mother extends toward shared response-ability and more inclusive futures, it requires questioning the human desire to reproduce.
Highlights
On Procreational Politics and Reproductive JusticeContemporary societies are moving into postsecular times with a widespread push toward “the progressive disintegration of traditional, popular piety” and toward “modern forms of religious consciousness such as fundamentalism and reflective faith” (Mendieta 2010, pages not numbered).This compels us to focus on the expectations and impact of the religious beliefs on our lives
I proposed that the Laestadian women’s accounts of desire to mother form a significant threshold for understanding religious procreational ethos and reproductive justice in decolonial feminist and post-anthropocene framing
To examine the Laestadian desire to mother, which entails the desire for women to be reproductive, I examined the procreational ethos of the Laestadian movement with Donna J
Summary
Contemporary societies are moving into postsecular times with a widespread push toward “the progressive disintegration of traditional, popular piety” and toward “modern forms of religious consciousness such as fundamentalism and reflective faith” (Mendieta 2010, pages not numbered). The assignment “provoked” the women to write “against the grain”, which means questioning their given position as women in the religious movement to enable new ways of thinking (see Davies 1993), and working towards expression intertwined with embodied and other material and discursive processes within and beyond the social (see Davies and Gannon 2012; Braidotti 2005/2006). In this case, in my role as a researcher, I was aware of and responsible for the possible harms and effects that the research might have on the women who were from an exclusive movement. They felt that this enclosed and intimate way of working together boosted their self-confidence as women, and they indicated their desire to continue the collaboration for a further two years after the agreed data production ended
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