The Phenomenology of Gravidity: Reframing Pregnancy and the Maternal through Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Derrida [Hardcover]

The Phenomenology of Gravidity explores the particularity of women's engagements with gestation, linking the denial of certain embodied experiences of pregnancy to gender oppression. Employing the term 'gravidity' to name the metaphysical condition of having conceived, Lymer develops a theory of maternity that emphasises the interactive nature of gestation, highlighting the necessity for women to choose to become maternal as an important factor in optimal foetal development. Critically drawing on bonding and attachment theory, Lymer rethinks debates around abortion, adoption and surrogacy which ignore the ethical and practical implications of an understanding of gestation that is necessarily interactive and embodied, challenging the view of the pregnant woman as a passive container. Through an engagement with the work of Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Derrida, The Phenomenology of Gravidityoffers an ethical feminist framework for a hospitality of gravidity which welcomes the place of the pregnant mother in all her guises, while highlighting the medical, legal and ethical consequences of failing in this welcome.Jane Lymer is a research fellow in Philosophy at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

'a clear, well-written, comprehensible account of the phenomenology of pregnancy, breaking new ground and leading into innovative practical directions especially regarding adoption and surrogacy' Dr. Denise Russell, Honorary Research Fellow in Philosophy, University of Wollongong

'Lymers strikingly perceptive book dismantles images of the pregnant mother as a passive container providing hospitality to a foetus, and reveals graviditythe actual experience of bearing a childas a complex, bodily, affective, interactive becoming of mother and child together. An highly original contribution to feminist, phenomenological discussions of pregnancy (Diprose, Guenther, LaChance Adams), with important implications for medicine, law and policy'. David Morris, Chair & Prolóç