Per una fenomenologia critica della gravidanza

Abstract

In this paper, I outline some key epistemic premises for a critical phenomenology of gestational experience, working through the analysis of pregnant embodiment in Merleau-Ponty’s Psychologie et pédagogie de l’enfant. The first part of my paper introduces Merleau-Ponty’s anti-essentialist position; in the second part, I focus on pregnant embodiment, and I highlight Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the gestating subject as a self in the world and of the gestational body as lived body. In the third and final part, I suggest how critical phenomenology might account philosophically for the situated experience of the gestating self by considering the intersection of pregnancy and disability as a case study. These findings may suggest a path for fruitful further analysis of pregnant lived experience, taking into account the axes of oppression and marginalisation which shape one’s subjectivity.