Maieutics - Note No. 8
O'Brien admits her periodization is shakey.
"Of course modes of contraception have existed for
a long time, and many feminists have argued that these
have been deliberately suppressed by men. In
Hegelian terminology these have been particular modes
of contraception, and only contemporary technology can
realize universal contraception." ("Hegel: Man, Physiology and
Fate"
18, n. 1) O'Brien will nuance
in Reproducing
the World (201, n.
12).
The remarks end with a reformulation. She writes
"but contemporary technology can realize
"universal" contraception, a fact which
profoundly transforms the social relations of
reproduction." O'Brien could be reacting to
a possible criticism of her dichotomization of Hegel
since she leaves out of the play of particular and
universal the intermediary term Individualität.
Whatever the case, there is no doubt that in the
intervening period the work on modes of contraception
by the "many feminists" and others gains
greater currency. Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre
English had earlier acknowledged The Manufacture
of Madness (Delta, 1971) by Thomas Szasz
especially his chapter on "The Witch as
Healer" (Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A
History of Women Healers, (Old Westbury, N.Y.:
The Feminist Press, 1973), 42). The figure of the
witch-healer is popularized in the work of such
thinkers as Starhawk and Mary Daly whose strands of
feminism do not mesh well with O'Brien's materialism.
Recent work unavailable to O'Brien challenges the bases
of her periodization more thoroughly. Angus McLaren
notes "Most [histories of the regulation of
reproduction] serve the unintentional purpose not so
much of providing an understanding of past cultures as
of applauding our own" and he goes on "Women
in the "bad old days" of the pre-industrial
world, such works commonly argue, were plagued by
repeated unwanted pregnancies; in rational modern
societies reliable contraceptives assure control of
one's body." A History of Contraception:
From Antiquity to the Present Day (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1990. 1). His work shows that such
effective measures as prolonged lactation to spread out
pregnancies were well known in pre-industrial Europe.
Ironically in O'Brien's dialectics of reproduction,
breast feeding would belong to the moment of nurture
which she claims to be "genderically shared"
(Politics of
Reproduction
47).