Women´s Subjectivity: Medical Practices and Motherhood

• Grant number: 11/09098-8
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): August 01, 2011
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal researcher: Heloisa Buarque de Almeida
• Grantee: Estrella Cinta Maestre Amigo
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The postdoctoral research project Women's Subjectivities: Medical practices and Motherhood analyzes the influence that biomedical practices and medicalization of maternity have in the constitution of the forms of subjectivation of woman as mother. Motherhood is a matter that, beyond the determinant relevancy in the life of every woman and every child, has significant economic, political, and social implications. Within an interdisciplinary approach, the present project investigates the forms of constitution of women's subjectivities related to maternity through the study of the medical practices developed from 1970 up to the actuality. From the perspective of the recent advances in feminist theories, and inspired by Michel Foucault thought, we investigate the procedures by which, under different medical practices related to maternity, a normative subjectivation form (assujetissement) is constituted, therefrom the woman body provides locations inside which "healthy" or "appropriate" forms of maternity are produced and repeated. Then, we think that the study of medical practices concerning the ways of appropriation of maternal conducts can show how medicalization of maternity has affected to the ways in which women feel and understand processes of their vital cycle constitutive of their maternity and ways of life woman such like gestation, childbearing, post-native care, etc.