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“Reproducing the World”: Mary O'Brien's Theory of Reproductive Consciousness and Implications for Feminist Incarnational Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Abstract
Mary O'Brien has inspired a vigorous reexamination of the concept and practices of reproduction. Her philosophy of birth reclaims this central female experience from the existentialist category of unconscious immanence. This article sketches O'Brien's theory and suggests how her reappraisal of reproductive process sheds light on the contradictions in traditional messages about biological difference, the nature of women, and the meaning of motherhood. It illustrates its claim by reading one such message, John Paul II's Mulieris Dignitatem, in light of O'Brien's work, and argues that using the bio-social process of reproduction as an analytic tool helps overcome dualisms and can further feminist insights into incarnation as a dynamic principle of creation. It invites further reflection on embodiment, birth, and motherhood as theological concepts.
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1 I wish to thank Carolyn Sharp, Ph.D. candidate, University of Saint Michael's College (Toronto School of Theology), Terence J. Martin of Saint Mary's College, and the referees of Horizons for their suggestions on a prior version of this article. I am also grateful to them, to Alven M. Neiman and Ewa Ziarek of the University of Notre Dame, and to students Joan McConnell (SMC), Nicole Laux (SMC), and Catherine Watson (ND) for their comments on its first form.
2 Carr, Anne E., Transforming Grace: Christian Tradition and Women's Experience (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 149.Google Scholar
3 Dumais, Monique, “Femmes faites chair” in Lacelle, Elisabeth J., ed., La Femme, son corps, la religion: approches pluridisciplinaires I (Montréal: Les Éditions Bellarmin, 1983), 52–53.Google Scholar
4 An internationally respected theorist, Mary O'Brien is a professor of the sociology of education and feminist studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She brings a wealth of experience to her theoretical endeavors. After having spent many years as a practising nurse and midwife in Scotland and Canada, she returned to doctoral studies while in her early forties. A founding member of the Feminist Party of Canada, O'Brien continues to express her feminist understanding through a practical political commitment. Her books are The Politics of Reproduction (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981)Google Scholar, and Reproducing the World: Essays in Feminist Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989).Google Scholar
5 For examples of the use of O'Brien by feminist theologians and philosophers see Harrison, Beverly Wildung, Our Right to Choose (Boston: Beacon, 1983), 11;Google ScholarRuddick, Sara, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon, 1989);Google Scholar and Held, Virginia, “Birth and Death,” Ethics 99 (01 1989): 362–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The most sustained engagement with O'Brien's ideas has come from Condren, Mary, “Patriarchy and Death” in Kalven, Janet and Buckley, Mary I., eds., Women's Spirit Bonding (New York: Pilgrim, 1984), 173–89Google Scholar, and Condren, Mary, The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989).Google Scholar See also Resources for Feminist Research/Documentation sur la recherche féministe 18/3 (09 1989).Google Scholar Hereafter RFR/DRF. The entire issue, entitled Feminist Theory: The Influence of Mary O'Brien, discusses the reception of The Politics of Reproduction and the influence of O'Brien's theory on current feminist scholarship and practice. It includes an annotated bibliography of O'Brien's published writings. Also in that issue, Thiele, Bev, “Dissolving Dualisms: O'Brien, Embodiment and Social Construction,” 7–12Google Scholar, situates O'Brien among feminist theorists and assesses how her contribution moves beyond Marxist feminist Michèle Barrett and postmodern feminist Liz Grosz.
6 Just as many theologians of liberation see that the use of Marxian categories may be successful in transforming theology in an acceptable and salutary way, I suggest that O'Brien's theoretical analysis of reproduction can illumine theological questions pertaining to the nature of women and their role in the world. I do not espouse the whole of her work uncritically. See Haight, Roger, An Alternative Vision: An Interpretation of Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist, 1985), 260–64.Google Scholar See also Carr, Anne and Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, eds., The Special Nature of Women?, Concilium 6 (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991).Google Scholar
7 Paul, John II, Mulieris dignitatem “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women” (English language text), Origins 18/17 (10 1988): 261–83.Google Scholar
8 O'Brien, , Politics of Reproduction, 13.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., 21.
10 See ibid., 34-38. In O'Brien's reading of the texts, Hegel noticed that the process of reproduction was dialectically structured but failed to consider that it is also capable of significant transformation in historical terms. Marx's critique of Hegelian idealism insisted that the dialectical logic of necessity was grounded in material process. Yet Marx's interpretation of history did not produce a materialist view of the social relations of reproduction.
11 Ibid., 21.
12 Ibid., 47.
13 See ibid., 49-52. Although Virginia Held criticizes O'Brien for excluding men from reproductive labor, I read her as saying that only women necessarily perform reproductive labor in parution. O'Brien too sees that men and women can share in Held's broader notion of the “reproductive labor” involved in the care and nurture of children (see Held, , “Birth and Death,” 383Google Scholar).
14 In her introduction O'Brien clarifies that, although unsatisfactory from other perspectives, for the sake of analytical clarity, she confines the words “sex” and “sexuality” to the description of copulatory activity. For the differentiation of male and female and for the social relations between men and women, the word “gender” is used (Politics of Reproduction, 13).
15 See ibid., 59. In O'Brien's analysis, giving birth constitutes a dialectic which unifies knowing and doing, consciousness and creative activity, temporality and continuity. It is mediated with reproductive process.
16 O'Brien, , Reproducing the World, 15.Google Scholar
17 See Condren, , “Patriarchy and Death,” 173–89Google Scholar, and “Conclusions: The Age of the Fathers-Male Reproductive Consciousness: Its Contemporary Influence in Church and State” in The Serpent and the Goddess, 183-210.
18 See Politics of Reproduction, 50.
19 Ibid., 52 (italics O'Brien's).
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., 54 (italics O'Brien's).
22 Ibid., 56.
23 Ibid., 54-55, 49.
24 O'Brien, , Reproducing the World, 14–15.Google Scholar
25 O'Brien, , Politics of Reproduction, 16.Google Scholar
26 Ibid., 45.
27 See O'Brien, , Reproducing the World, 235.Google Scholar
28 See ibid., 205-85, for essays devoted to the practical issues of health care and education.
29 O'Brien, , Politics of Reproduction, 14Google Scholar, and “Feminism and Revolution” in Miles, Angela R. and Finn, Geraldine, eds., Feminism: From Pressure to Politics (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1989), 332–35.Google Scholar
30 O'Brien, , Reproducing the World, 57.Google Scholar
31 Ibid., 17.
32 See Carr, Anne and Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, eds., Motherhood: Experience, Institution, Theology, Concilium 206 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989).Google Scholar
33 See van Lunen Chenu, Marie-Thérèse, “Between Sexes and Generations: Maternity Empowered” in Motherhood: Experience, Institution, Theology, 38.Google Scholar
34 The pope also recognizes that the distortion of this relationship into one of dominance and subordination is brought about by human sin. Furthermore, he recalls that the subjugation of women is accompanied by the promise of redemption. Yet women's liberation, he cautions, must never lead to women's appropriation of male characteristics contrary to their feminine originality (n. 10). What these particular characteristics are, he never specifies, but as I mention later this silence is not without significance.
35 Mulieris dignitatem, n. 18.
36 Ibid., n. 19. The pope always links the biblical exemplar of the woman in Genesis with the culmination of women's dignity in the exemplar of Mary the Mother of God. He also notes that in the Old Testament, God established the covenant with humanity by addressing himself only to men. At the beginning of the new eternal and irrevocable covenant stands a woman, Mary of Nazareth. As the new Eve, Mary is the full revelation of all that is included in the biblical word “woman.”
37 See Chenu, van Lunen, ”Between Sexes and Generations,” 38.Google Scholar
38 Ibid., 39. See also Baum, Gregory, “Bulletin: The Apostolic Letter Mulieris dignitatem” in Motherhood: Experience, Institution, Theology, 149.Google Scholar
39 Carr, , Transforming Grace, 149.Google Scholar See also Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Sexism and God-Talk (Boston: Beacon, 1983)Google Scholar, and Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, In Memory of Her (New York: Crossroad, 1984).Google Scholar
40 Kohn-Roelin, Johanna, “Mother—Daughter—God” in Motherhood: Experience, Institution, Theology, 65.Google Scholar
41 O'Brien, , Reproducing the World, 50.Google Scholar
42 Baum, Compare, “Bulletin,” 147.Google Scholar
43 See note 3.
44 See McFague, Sallie, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987).Google Scholar
45 See Carr and Fiorenza, eds., The Special Nature of Women?
46 See Soelle, Dorothee with Cloyes, Shirley A., To Work and To Love: A Theology of Creation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).Google Scholar
47 See Condren, , “Patriarchy and Death,” 173ffGoogle Scholar, and Smith, Dorothy E., The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 85.Google Scholar
48 O'Brien's theory does not suggest, e.g., that women are more caring or nurturing than men. She would say that social structures have given us more practice in these human characteristics. Although her starting point is different, she would agree with Sara Ruddick that the work of women can give rise to ways of thinking and acting that are pivotal in re-imagining a more peaceful world (see Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace).
Since the publication of The Politics of Reproduction, feminist theorists have done an enormous amount of work on the complex question of gender relations. O'Brien's insight is more significant as a part of this larger picture than in isolation from it. See, for examples, the following and the bibliographies they provide: Code, Lorraine, What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction of Knowledge (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991);Google ScholarFlax, Jane, Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, & Postmodernism in the Contemporary West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990);Google ScholarHarding, Sandra, Whose Science Whose Knowledge: Thinking from Women's Lives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991);Google Scholar and Smith, Dorothy E., Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
49 Birke, Lynda and Vines, Gail, “Beyond Nature versus Nature,” Women's Studies International Forum 10/6 (1987): 555CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as cited in Thiele, RFR/DRF, 11.
50 See O'Brien, , Reproducing the World, 7–10.Google Scholar
51 See O'Brien, , Politics of Reproduction, 64Google Scholar, and chap. 4, “Creativity and Procreativity,” 116-39.
52 See ibid., chaps. 3 and 5, “The Public and Private Realms,” and “Production and Reproduction,” 93-139, 140-84.
53 See Thiele, Bev, “Dissolving Dualisms: O'Brien, Embodiment and Social Construction,” RFR/DRF, 7–12.Google Scholar O'Brien makes the point that the theoretical frameworks of existentialism, psychoanalysis, and Marxism, which have all been useful to feminist theorists, are predicated on the biological needs of dying, sexual intercourse, and eating (Politics of Reproduction, 20). These frameworks and the biology at their basis have also been significant in the work of liberation, political, and critical feminist theologians.
54 Minnich, Elizabeth Kamarck, “Review of Reproducing the World: Essays in Feminist Theory by Mary O'Brien,” Signs 16/1 (Autumn 1990): 180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
55 See, e.g., the essays in Virginia Fabella, M.M. and Oduyoye, Mercy Amba, With Passion and Compassion: Third World Women Doing Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989);Google ScholarTamez, Elsa, ed., Through Their Eyes: Women Theologians from Latin America (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989);Google ScholarVirginia Fabella, M.M. and Park, Sun Ai Lee, eds., We Dare to Dream: Doing Theology as Asian Women (Hong Kong: Asian Women's Resource Centre for Culture and Theology, 1989);Google Scholar and Thistlethwaite, Susan, Sex, Race, and God: Christian Feminism in Black and White (New York: Crossroad, 1989).Google Scholar
56 Haughton, Rosemary, The Catholic Thing (Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1979), 231.Google Scholar
57 Ad Gentes, par 10, in Abbott, Walter M. S.J., ed., The Documents of Vatican II (New York: America Press, 1966), 597.Google Scholar
58 See Christine Gudorf's essay on this topic which outlines the overt restrictions of women's choice for motherhood present in most societies: “Women's Choice for Motherhood: Beginning a Cross-cultural Approach” in Motherhood: Experience, Institution, Theology, 55-63.
59 O'Brien, , Reproducing the World, 290.Google Scholar
60 O'Brien, , Politics of Reproduction, 59.Google Scholar See also The World's Women 1970-1990: Trends and Statistics (New York: United Nations, 1991)Google Scholar for a current picture of how conditions are changing or not changing for women.
61 O'Brien, , Politics of Reproduction, 13.Google Scholar
62 Brumet, Madeleine R., “Knots: Feminist Theorizing in the Middle,” RFR/DRF, 17.Google Scholar