CAROLINA BERNARDINI ANTONIAZZI

This research aims to investigate the experience of motherhood from the displacements provided by their counterfigures. From the analysis of the maternity present in The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, we seek to recover the ideal figure of the mother produced by western society: from the Middle Age 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 still persists and it is a source of oppression, illness and psychological suffering. Through the letter of Beauvoir’s text, we can make our first criticisms of this ideal of the mother figure, but also question: who and what do we talk about when we talk about motherhood? From the counterfigures — regreted mother, single mother, adoptive mother, lesbian mother, foster mother, transgender mother, the one who chooses not to be a mother, among others — we seek other ways of subjectivation in addition to other possible modes of maternity. Through philosophical texts, but also through the description of the lived experience of such subjects, keeping race, class and gender what they tell us about their motherhood.