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irreconcilability in the digital: gender, technological imaginings and maternal subjectivity

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Feminist Review

Abstract

Drawing on empirical research from two focus groups, this article investigates the narratives and discourses that emerged around pregnancy, technology, birth and motherhood. In so doing, the article engages in some long-standing debates within feminism around embodied and maternal subjectivity, agency and identity. Seen here, the focus groups serve initially to remind us of the pervasiveness of gender inequality and the continual ambiguity of, and anxieties around, maternal subjectivity. The focus groups reconfigure these issues through a technological lens, which in turn seems to offer new spaces where agency can be (momentarily, problematically) claimed. This in turn extends existing debates in new directions through the particular framework of technology that is variously figured here as an object, as information and as imaginary digital space. All of these constructions, however, become problematic as they—despite their promises—nevertheless ultimately and profoundly return the women to an emplaced, embodied subjectivity that has been at the heart of feminist debate for so long.

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Notes

  1. In structuring the article in this way, I am in no way suggesting a dichotomous relationship between corporeal and virtual. Indeed, as many theorists have noted, this is unrepresentative, unhelpful and deeply problematic (e.g., Grosz, 2001; Walkerdine, 2007; Thornham and McFarlane, 2014).

  2. The final report (Coleman et al., 2013) was fed back to Leeds Council and circulated by the Local Authorities Research and Intelligence Association.

  3. We are currently working with a wider cross section of women in relation to their experiences of the digital transformations brought on by the changes resulting from Welfare Reforms in the United Kingdom. Maternal and gendered subjectivity are key facets shaping their experiences. And while they are not discussed in this article, they nevertheless shape the critical and conceptual frameworks drawn on to understand the discussions. For more information about these projects, see http://www.communitiesandculture.org/projects.

  4. Seen more recently in the rise of what has been called ‘mommy lit’, ‘motherhood memoirs’ or ‘new momism’ (Di Quinzio, 1999; Frye, 2010; O’Reilly, 2010).

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Thornham, H. irreconcilability in the digital: gender, technological imaginings and maternal subjectivity. Fem Rev 110, 1–17 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2015.14

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