Vocazione alla sterilità come declino dell’ordine simbolico della madre

Abstract

Vocation to barrenness as the decay of the symbolic mother order - Cultural psychology has by now sanctioned also in the area of scientific research the importance and the value of the symbolic orders that underlie relationships. Family and couple relationships develop on the meanings that define the emotional bond, which represents the symbolic horizon of a woman that chooses motherhood. In the West, between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century the feminist movement opened the way to what would eventually allow women to choose motherhood of their own free will, putting into play a number of factors that established a break with the patriarchal tradition. In parallel, the choice of infertility has been an increasing phenomenon becoming more and more worrying for all European societies, because of the sharply falling birth-rate. In this article this issue is addressed not so much to find a link between women’s social commitment and vocation to barrenness, but rather to discuss the relationship between body representations in the history of ontological thought and its current result. Key words: history of motherhood, episteme, God’s death, feminism.