On Maternal Thinking
On Maternal Thinking
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论母亲的思想
DOI：
10.1353/wsq.0.0181
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发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Sara Ruddick
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Sara Ruddick
30年前，在20世纪70年代末，我花了一些时间徘徊在艾德丽安·里奇在《出生的女人》中提出的一种可能性上。里奇问道，难道女性“即使在现在，也在以传统宗教所否认、谴责或无法理解的方式思考吗？我不需要“女性的直觉”或“女性的敏感性”的特殊优雅，这些礼物标志着心灵的缺失，而不是它的区别。妇女可以与最好的“我们”进行推理;推理的能力是人类的一种美德。让我感兴趣的女性思维方式来自于女性参与的活动，这些活动增强了她们的力量。妇女承担着不成比例的劳动责任，而这些人是病人、文盲、体弱、绝望、年幼或年老-总之，需要照顾。我开始阐明“照顾的合理性”，把母性和它所表达的母性思想作为一个主要的例子。30年后的今天，我又回到了我的问题上，只是更加具体。我想问，母性的实践是否能促进或要求独特的认知能力、形而上学的态度和美德观念？如果是这样的话，这种母性的思维又能有什么用处呢？三位女权主义思想家和我一起思考这个问题：兰贾娜卡纳、安德里亚·奥莱利和艾米·理查兹。我感谢他们的慷慨关注，这有助于我理解我的想法。安德里亚奥莱利给我们提供了一个开放的场景阅读，也是一个母亲的场景。由于没有钱，也没有车，安德里亚把伴侣留在家里，带着四个六岁以下的孩子来到母亲的小别墅。她的目的是休息，准备即将到来的八小时考试。但她的母亲，谁爱她的孙子，是太多的人在小木屋不知所措，提供太多的帮助。安德里亚几乎不能学习或休息。然而，她确实开始阅读《母性思维》。有时候她会带着书偷偷溜走，就像“需要刺激的瘾君子。其他时候，她的孩子们在不远处玩耍，因为她密切关注，但不太密切，“仔细检查”，因为她读到了书中的仔细检查。安德里亚阅读的版本的封面描绘了一个种族不明的女人，她有点陷入沉思。封面上的简介将这本书描述为“第一次尝试从哲学的角度描述母亲们所做的工作中产生的思想。安德里亚引用了《Unes》一书中的话，她认为许多女性的生活正在发生变化：“母亲的工作要求母亲思考;出于对体贴的需要，一种独特的发现出现了。”安德里亚写道：“Unes是unned，页码圈了两次，段落仍然被沙子和水弄脏了。是的，妈妈们在想！在其他地方，安德里亚说她被母性思维的细节所吸引。“我喜欢仔细检查，我喜欢持有，我喜欢具体的思考，欢迎变化，谦逊等等。“我喜欢安德烈，因为他喜欢细节。但在这里，她提出了我对母性实践的叙述中的主要组织主题，比我能管理的更清晰和更有力。然而，我相信我已经播下了一个需要整理的混乱。我已经说过，安德莉亚也强调过，母亲的工作或实践与母亲的身份是不同的。任何人只要致力于母性实践的要求，就可以履行母性职责。母亲就是母亲。尽管如此，说“这位母亲养育其他母亲的孩子，与她间接养育的自己的孩子保持一定距离”（我描述了移民母亲的家庭状况）是有道理的。做母亲的责任不应被忽视。它是内在的关系和世代标记的时间身份，是过去和未来，遗产和承诺。我们的母亲的故事告诉我们我们是谁，我们做什么。养育孩子的责任心--这是格蕾丝·佩利留给我们的一个绝妙的短语--标志着关系、身份，以及我们所做的工作。…
Thirty years ago, in the late 1970s, I spent some time hovering over a possibility suggested by Adrienne Rich in Of Woman Born. Could it be, Rich asked, that women are "even now thinking in ways which traditional intellection denies, decries or is unable to grasp?" I had no use for the special graces of "women's intuition" or "feminine sensibility," gifts that marked the absence of mind, not its distinction. Women could reason with the best of "us"; the capacity to reason was a human good. The ways of women's thinking that intrigued me would arise from the activities in which women engaged and that strengthened them. Women bear a disproportionate responsibility for the labor required by people who are ill, illiterate, frail, despairing, very young or very old - who are, in sum, in need of care. I set out to elucidate the "rationality of care," x taking mothering, and the maternal thinking it expresses, as a primary instance. Now, thirty years later, I am returning to my question, only with more specificity. Could it be, I ask, that practices of mothering prompt or require distinctive cognitive capacities, metaphysical attitudes, and conceptions of virtue? If so, to what uses could this maternal thinking be put? Three feminist thinkers have joined me in reflecting on this question: Ranjana Khanna, Andrea O'Reilly, and Amy Richards. I am grateful for their generous attention, which helps me to understand my ideas. Andrea O'Reilly gives us an opening by providing a scene for reading that is also a motherhood scene. With little money and no car, Andrea has left her partner at home and traveled with four children, six years old and younger, to her mother's small cottage. Her intention is to rest and prepare for an upcoming eight-hour exam. But her mother, who adores her grandchildren, is too overwhelmed by the crowd in the small cottage to offer much help. Andrea can barely study or rest. She does, however, begin to read Maternal Thinking. Sometimes she sneaks off with the book, like "an addict in need of a hit." Other times, her children play in the near distance, as she watches closely but not too closely, "scrutinizing" as she reads about scrutinizing in the book. The cover of the edition Andrea reads portrays a woman of indeterminate ethnicity who is somewhat lost in thought. The blurb on the cover describes the book as "the first attempt to describe from a philosophical perspective the thinking that grows out of the work that mothers do." Andrea cites from the book Unes that she beUeves were Ufe changing for many women: "The work of mothering demands that mothers think; out of this need for thoughtfulness, a distinctive discipUne emerges" (24). Andrea writes: "The Unes are underUned, and the page number circled twice and the paragraph remains soiled by sand and water. Yes, mothers think!" Elsewhere, Andrea has said that she is drawn to the details of Maternal Thinking. "I love scrutinizing, I love holding, I love concrete thinking, welcoming change, humiUty and so forth." I love Andrea for loving the details. But here she outUnes major organizing themes of my account of maternal practices, more clearly and energeticaUy than I could manage. I beUeve, however, that I have sowed a confusion that needs neatening. I have said, and Andrea emphasizes, that the work or practice of mothering is distinct from the identity of the mother. Mothering may be performed by anyone who commits him- or herself to the demands of maternal practice. Mother is as mother does. Nonetheless, it makes sense to say, "This mother mothers other mothers' children at a distance from her own children whom she mothers indirectly" (I describe a famiUar situation of immigrant mothers). The self of mothering should not be sUghted. It is inherently relational and generational - marking temporal identities that are at once past and future, legacy and promise. Our maternal stories teU us who we are as weU as what we do. Raising children righteously up - a marvelous phrase left us by Grace Paley - signals relationship, identities, and, emphaticaUy, the work that we do. …