Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 03:01:53 -0500
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: Re: Historicize the Fetus (was Re: M-TH: Britain's abortion row)


>Rob Schaap wrote:
>>> But I point to it so that abortion too can be historically conceptualised.
>
>Shouldn't you also historicize the fetus? When and how did some people
>begin to make emotional investment in the fetus? Why? For what purpose? To
>what effect?
>
>I venture to say that to the extent that people make emotional investment
>in the fetus, people disinvest from the ideals of women's agency,
>self-determination, sexual freedom, and emancipation.
>
>Why? Because emotional investment in the fetus creates emotional capital
>which will be re-invested to exploit women's physical and affective labor.
>
>Now that the nuclear family is becoming untenable under material assaults
>by capital while it continues to be criticized from many perspectives
>(feminist, marxist, communitarianist, libertarian, etc.), some folks seem
>to be responding to this "crisis" of the nuclear family by creating a new
>nucleus of human belonging ("bonding with the fetus") to serve as a
>substitute "haven in the heartless world."
>
>As marxists and feminists, we ought to historicize this new "haven" of
>"innocence," as we have done so with the nuclear family.
>
>Yoshie

Exactly Joshie! Just like the myth "if you step on and ant it rains!"..

Bob Malecki



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