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Women Without a Shadow: Maternal Desire and Assisted Reproductive Technologies

Author(s) : Silvia Tubert

Reviews and Endorsements

In this book Silvia Tubert locates reproductive technologies in the historical context of the progressive technification of the management of human life. Their relation to social and medical discourses on femininity, maternity and infertility is rigorously analysed. Culture and its discontents, violence, and domination, are related intimately to the problematic character of sexuality, which includes the uncertainties of our desires. Social, medical, anthropological and literary discourses try to define 'maternal desire' in order to control it. But psychoanalysis shows that we face here an impossible question. The enunciated 'demand', what is said about one's own desire ('I want a child') is one thing. A very different one is the unconscious desire which disturbs the conscious discourse and shows that there can be psychological obstacles that interfere with the accomplishment of conscious wishes. Conflicts and contradictions emerge from women's words.

This original and provocative book confronts a discourses arising from psychoanalysis, medicine, journalism, ethnology, mythology and literature, and vitally moves on the argument in relation to all of them.

Silvia Tubert - Doctor in Psychology and Psychoanalyst - works on femininity, feminine sexuality and maternity, articulating the psychoanalytic theory with anthropologic, literary and feminist discourses. She has published "La sexualidad femenina y su construcción imaginaria" ("Feminine sexuality and its imaginary construction") Madrid, 1988; and recently "Deseo y representación. Convergencias de psicoanálisis y teoría feminista", ("Desire and representation. Convergences between psychoanalysis and feminist theory") Madrid, 2001. She has also written about Freud's work: "Malestar en la palabra. El pensamiento crítico de Freud y la Viena de su tiempo" ("Discontent in Language. Freud's critical theory and fin-de-siecle Vienna"), Madrid, 2000; and "S.Freud. Fundamentos de teoría psicoanalítica" ("S.Freud. Fundamentals of psychoanalytic theory"), Madrid, 2001.