Corpi pubblici: cittadinanza, maternità e potere a partire da Mary Wollstonecraft

The thesis investigates the relationship between the political inclusion and exclusion starting from women's bodies to question the forms of the relation between nature and culture. From Mary Wollstonecraft, in fact, claim citizenship meant redefining the public space and the concept of political action, redrawing the boundaries between public and private and between the natural and cultural. In controversy with Rousseau, Wollstonecraft proposes an idea of maternal citizenship, who can hold together equality and differences without hierarchy. Motherhood becomes a paradigmatic moment to grasp the different forms of power that affect women's bodies, but also their subjectivity. In this perspective I will try to shed light on the construction of a reflection on motherhood, showing the changes - and persistences - from the first hospitals in the late eighteenth century to the contemporary technologies. I will put in question the medical discourse to show how it has affected – and continues to affect – the perception of pregnancy by women and how this affects their identity construction. Beside this I will use narrative texts to analyze the changes in the collective imaginary and the different reactions to them. Finally, I will highlight the critical issues of contemporary discourses on the maternal, dominated by the notion of life – referring to the fetus –, by the centrality of scientific knowledge, by the distinction between identity as a woman and mother and by a continuous dialogue with technologies and fear of them. Through reflection on motherhood I propose a partial rethinking of the notion of biopolitics – trough the work of Angel Putino – in which can find place a sexed body subjected to the pressures of subjection and subjectivation by some power devices frequently difficult to recognize. Rethinking the action of bio-power, embodied in concrete bodies, gives the possibility to observe with new eyes the notion of maternal citizenship and the relationship between exclusion / inclusion, and between nature and culture.