CAROLINA BERNARDINI ANTONIAZZI

This research aims to investigate the experience of motherhood from the displacements provided by their counterfigures. Through the analysis of the maternity as it is written in The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, we seek to restore the idealized figure of the mother produced by western society: from the Middle Ages and the image of the Virgin Mary to Freud, we will be able to recreate the idealized, naturalized, romanticized and sanctified figure. We will see how this model persists and is a source of oppression, illnesses and psychological suffering. Through Beauvoir’s text, we can make our first criticism of this idealized mother figure, but also question: of whom and what we talk about when we talk about motherhood? Through counterfigures — the regretful mother, prostitute mother, lesbian mother, foster mother, transgender mother, the ones who choose not to be a mother, among others — we look for different modes of subjectivation in addition to other modes of maternity. Keeping in perspective race, class and gender, through philosophical texts, and also the description of the lived experience of these subjects, we will analyze what they tell about their maternity.