Motherhood as the Subject-Forming Element of the Woman Represented by Feminism

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to defining and solving the problem of the subject in feminist discourse through analyzing the concept of motherhood and investigating how women are introduced to it. The problem derives from lack of a single utopian future without oppression in feminism, and, inherently, the absence of a fully actualized subject. Therefore, the need arises for a type of individual that is suitable for representational politics, one able to absorb potentially infinite numbers of actors while maintaining a feminist focus. The first part of the paper shows that previous feminist attempts to identify women have failed to meet the challenges of feminism, excluding certain circles of women, etc. The analysis is conducted on the basis of a generalized representation of the feminist subjects of essentialist and anti-essentialist tendencies. The second part of the work is devoted to the construction of a new subject based on motherhood, which is considered one of the subject-forming elements. This proposed foundation is then correlated with the critique of how women are introduced to motherhood and why it, as the basis of the feminist subject, might allow to form a new type of subject. Thus, previous understandings of femininity are critically viewed as implicit in motherhood, and are replaced by the concept of a subject in which motherhood is not a condition of its existence, but one of its fundamental elements.