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Fall 2009 263
263
Eating One’s Mother:
Female Embodiment in a Toxic World
Eva-Maria Simms*
* Psychology Department, Duquesne University, 600 Forbes Avenue, 544 College Hall, Pittsburgh,
PA 15282. As a phenomenologist, Simms studies the psychology of the child in its historical and existential
dimensions, and investigates such philosophical themes as embodiment, co-existentiality, spatiality,
temporality, and language in light of their appearance in early childhood. She is the author of the book
University Press, 2008) and of numerous articles on Merleau-Ponty, childhood, Rilke’s existentialism,
1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, -
2 Rainer Maria Rilke, pt. 2, v. 1, in 3 vols.
(original translation; emphasis added).
Breast milk and the placenta are phenomena of female human embodiment that challenge
the philosophical notion of separate, sovereign subjects independent of other human be-
Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray, reveals placenta and milk to be intercorporeal, “chiasmic” forms
of shared organic existence. This analysis is a philosophical and psychological exploration
of “matrotopy,” i.e., the fact that humans eat their mothers through breast milk and placenta.
sustains the female body and its offspring. Environmental degradation, particularly through
estrogen mimicking substances in plastics and pesticides, targets the endocrine system of
developing fetuses and endangers the future of the human species . Invisible
continues
to happen in female bodies today.
—Ma u r i c e Me r l e a u -Po n t y 1
—ra i n e r Ma r i a ri l k e 2
THE TOP OF THE FOOD-CHAIN
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS264 Vol. 31
3 Sandra Steingraber,
Perseus Books, 2001), p. 250.
4 Ibid.
3
Long-lived pesticides, such as PCBs and DDT do not get diluted in the environ-
ment but become more concentrated in the food chain, “smelt to mackerel, mack-
erel to tuna, tuna to man,”4 a process that is called The poster
image of man at the top of the food-chain is obviously and unconsciously sexist.
highly concentrated toxins. The image of the contaminated food chain invites us
to think about the pregnant and lactating body as it is lived not just as a
, but as a at
and self-contained apex of creation. Rather, the female body is open, a conduit for
the next generation, as passage for others that stretches through time. There is no
from food on to the next generation through the placenta and breast milk. The next
and even longer before it eats foods not made by the mother’s body.
-
cleansed of too many chemical substances to list before it can be consumed as
hyperactivity disorder, leukemia, pediatric brain cancer, birth defects, obesity, and
of the research literature on the impact of toxic environmental chemicals on human
This body of research demonstrates cause for serious concern that commonly encoun-
tered household and environmental chemicals contribute to developmental disabilities.
The developing brain is uniquely susceptible to permanent impairment by exposure to
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been extensively studied and found to impair
Fall 2009 265
5
Child Development,”
6
7
in the United States,” Acta Paediatrica
8
Disruptors,”
9
general population. High-dose exposures to each of these chemicals cause catastrophic
developmental effects.5
The list of poisons that sediment and remain in the human body over a lifetime
is almost unbelievable.
assignment had his blood tested for chemical compounds in 2006.6 Some of the
banned pesticides DDT and chlordane came from the local Kansas City dump or
from carpets and furniture at home and from frequent airplane trips, phthalates
endocrine systems of other mammals. The xenobiotics (chemicals foreign
discovered that in the U.S. rural population the rate of birth defects such as spina
of agrichemicals in the environment are the greatest.7
organic defects and infertility in male offspring, but it mutates the DNA sequences
-
fect on the organ formation of a species.8
-
9
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS266 Vol. 31
10 Steingraber, p. 233.
11 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, -
12
on suffer less from asthma, juvenile diabetes, allergies, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative
colitis, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis—all illnesses that are due to a misguided
immune reaction. Breast milk safeguards against obesity and cancer, and it helps
contact.10
Breast and baby are an intercorporeal form, and breastfeeding reveals the ambiguity
11
trans-subjective, non-dualistic psychology. I thought at that time that milk is an
a priori, that it begins in the maternal body and cannot be reduced any further. In
Florence
Your breast milk tells the decades-old story of your diet, your neighborhood and,
increasingly, your household decor. Your old shag-carpet padding? It’s there. That
cool blue paint in your pantry? There. The chemical cloud your landlord used to kill
gas station, the preservative parabens from your face cream, the chromium from your
neighborhood smokestack. One property of breast milk is that its high-fat and -protein
content attracts heavy metals and other contaminants. Most of these chemicals are found
are much higher than the doses I get. This is not only because she is smaller, but also
because her food—my milk—contains more concentrated contaminants than my food.
12
environmental pollutants challenges on some fundamental level the relationship
persistent organic pollutants (POPs), breast milk is the most contaminated of human
Fall 2009 267
13 Steingraber, , p. 251.
14 Ibid.
15
1980), p. 3.
16 Merleau-Ponty,
foods,” says Steingraber.13 She reports that the concentration of organochlorine
levels for poisonous or deleterious substances in food and could not be sold.”14 The
given.
degradation impacts the human species most directly and insidiously. On a deeper
the female body through the food chain poses a series of philosophical challenges.
do gestation and birth contribute to our understanding of being (from a female
is so clearly displayed in the phenomenon of breast milk, receive another dimen-
METAPHORS OF THE FLESH
-
ern our thoughts and organize our experiences are “fundamentally metaphorical
in nature.”15
phenomenology has the task to explore female embodiment and spatiality in order
to create, in language, metaphors that can encompass female experience and out of
history of philosophy.
In
colors and the visible as “the tissue that lines them, sustains them, nourishes them, and
of things.”16
In this passage, the term
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS268 Vol. 31
17 Steingraber, p. 34.
18 Merleau-Ponty, , p. 152.
19 Ibid., p. 208
20 Ibid.
21 Luce Irigaray,
22 Ibid., p. 162.
23 Ibid., p. 161.
24 Elisabeth Grosz, “Merleau-Ponty and Irigaray in the Flesh,” in
25 Irigaray, , p. 173.
spumes of mother’s blood.”17 Besides the placental metaphor, Merleau-Ponty’s
-
tive body. The visible is described as “a sort of folding back, invagination, or
padding.”18 The term is used to describe the “logos that pronounces
itself silently in each sensible thing,”19 and it designates a “productivity (
), fecundity”20 is the “more” that
itself perceptible.
Luce Irigaray points out that many of the images in
describe the visible in terms of “intrauterine nesting” and other maternal meta-
phors.21
context of the interplay of colors, the process of visual perception, and the experi-
life of the human body coming into being inside the body of another—through the
placenta.
22
lips silently applied to each other,”23 a key image in her understanding of female
tangible is perfectly capable of an existence autonomous from the visible.”24
-
25 and caught up in the fantasy of maternal
Fall 2009 269
26 Ibid., p. 183.
27 Luce Irigaray,
26
but joined palms, I assume, the freedom of questioning is born, and in the other’s
based on the metaphor of the touching hands, is one of language and critical thought,
Merleau-Ponty’s tries to excavate the pre-verbal and pre-conceptual immersion
the separate, independent, speaking subject through the conceptual metaphors of
lips and mucous membranes, Merleau-Ponty evokes the totality of being through
phenomenon of the chiasm.
Irigaray, on the other hand, although recognizing the female metaphors in Merleau-
Ponty, thinks that the female body ends at the edge of the skin. In her discussion
of the placenta in , for example,
teacher, Hélène Rouch) is at pains to explain that the placental economy is “one not
the “almost ethical character of the fetal relation.”27
ethics.
The challenge is to take Irigaray’s critique seriously, but also to maintain Merleau-
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS270 Vol. 31
28 Merleau-Ponty, , p. 139.
29 Steingraber, p. 31.
this generality of the Sensible in itself, this anonymity innate to Myself . . . , and one
-
28
and develop a fuller metaphorical and conceptual account of Merleau-Ponty’s
Irigaray’s barely begun discussion of a placental ethics.
The long columns of cells sent out by the embryo into the uterine lining during the
pregnancy, the treetops of an entire forest press up against the deepest layers of the
29
nutrients, and hormones from the mother’s blood into the fetal blood stream. The
placenta is
and existence.
-
part of the placenta. This representation provides the illusion that it is a separate
space, independent of the larger maternal environment. The idea of the “placental
Fall 2009 271
30
p. 51.
31 Steingraber, p. 34.
impermeable and protected the fetus from harmful substances. Even though the
placental membranes keep out bacteria, they do not protect the fetus from toxic
systems of teenagers and young adults. “If thalidomide exploded the myth of the
have to be immediate and visible to be important.”30
.
Through technological manipulation human beings have created substances that
deceive the placenta into letting them pass. Pesticides and methyl mercury become
even more concentrated during the placental exchange, and can be found in higher
concentrations in umbilical cord blood than in the mother’s bloodstream.31 The
defects, premature birth, or long-term impairments of physical and psychological
functioning of the child. The fearful list of environmental pollutants and their impact
to our environment is not just “out there,” but it goes as deep as our placentas.
AFTERBIRTH
,
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS272 Vol. 31
32The Manner
Altamira Press, 2003).
33
umbilical cord is cut, the placenta leaves my body. Like menstrual blood and tis-
visible outside. It announces that time has passed, a process is completed, a part
societies delivery and disposal of the placenta is of grave concern. Sixteenth-century
“the second child” and believe that afterbirth it immediately becomes a ghost,
32 They also addressed the placenta directly in a
acts honor the intimate connection of the living infant to the dead placenta and its
the infant determines location and manner of disposal of the placenta.33
and handled by human hands other than the mother. Her invisible body becomes
public, her blood stains other skins. The born placenta implies the extraordinary
Fall 2009 273
34 Colborn, Dumanoski, and Myers, p. 107.
35 Ibid. p. 141.
36
of Semen during Past Fifty Years,”
THE GATE
The image of man at the top of the food chain creates the illusion of a closed
vaccinated for smallpox, polio and other diseases.34 Like the mothers of children
exposed to thalidomide or DES , Inuit mothers go about the business of
have been contaminated and invaded. Their placentas do not recognize persistent
35 Many scientists think that
36
Over the millennia, the human placenta has adapted to threats in the natural en-
destroyers. Xenobiotics invisibly attach themselves to our food through pesticides,
In milk they enter the metabolism of the infant.
.
The
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS274 Vol. 31
37
for Infants and Children?”
38
Metabolic Disorders,”
39 Ibid., p. 2.
40 Martin Heidegger,
-
Collins Publishers, 1993).
through time is accompanied by an evolving system of natural processes that
body and the bodies of generations to come.
A placental ethics understands the human being as a pass through. The substances
part of the food chain. The ethical call that issues from this insight is the demand
TECHNOLOGY
The toxicity of placenta and breast milk raises fundamental questions about the
existence. Let us take an example of a toxic substance that not only crosses the
placental barrier, but is released into children’s bodies on a daily basis. The chemical
regulator of development and reproduction.37
increases the risk of developing metabolic disorders in adults.38 Plastic technology
39
Traditional theories of technology in the continental tradition40 suggest that tech-
Fall 2009 275
elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen—and frames and values natural processes
only in terms of their contribution to the human project. Humans play God and
bidding.”41 The essence of modern technology is “to seek to order everything so
42
“enframing.” Not only nature, but the female human being herself has to be enhanced
through technological implements and becomes a resource to be used.
One principle that has governed the spread of technological devices in the
human creator, and that the “enframing” is never complete. Modern technologies
-
lifestyles in the U.S.; television changed the social structure of local communities
principle of the unintended, transcendent effects of technology also holds true for
on the social structure become visible over time, the unintended effects of chemo-
technologies on the organic structures of human, animal, and plant bodies remain
coatings—and the plastic industry still denies that it is a toxic substance, as the list
43
Heidegger -
41
p. 77.
42
43
44-
tion of “man” in this translation).
The threat to [humans] does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal
machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already afflicted the
human being in [his or her] essence. The truth of enframing threatens human beings
there is in the highest degree.44
The insidiousness of chemical technologies is that they operate on the substructure
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS276 Vol. 31
appear in the food chain long after their makers have died. In this respect, chemi-
cal technology functions on the “occult,” i.e., on the hidden spatio-temporal level,
of our organic being. The “danger” in Heidegger’s sense lies in the “enframing”
-
sequences of our manipulation. I am reminded of Goethe’s poem, “The Sorcerer’s
In his later years, Heidegger came to understand the challenge and promise of
45
and the concealed is the possibility and the call
human beings understand that there is a transcendent dimension beyond human
control. The placental imagination
human and nonhuman beings.
PSYCHOANALYSIS OF NATURE
our children. This intimate bodily connection is a feminist issue. The female body is
apparent. In the late notes of Merleau-Ponty challenges
46 One key
insight of Merleau-Ponty’s “psychoanalysis of nature” is to posit that the open-
gestation and birth, blurs the Cartesian distinction of thought and thing.47 There
45 Ibid., p. 337 (emphasis added).
46 Merleau-Ponty, , p. 267.
47 M. Merleau-Ponty,
Fall 2009 277
The placental image, more than vision or touch, evokes the ground and genesis of
Ineinander”48—
the foreign body of the fetus, but supports and nourishes it. Merleau-Ponty’s no-
-
ing from a perspective that transcends the human subject. Placental transcendence,
It is intimate, inside us, deep, and invites us to think ourselves out of ourselves.
A psychoanalysis of nature in Merleau-Ponty’s sense calls for a psychological
49
50 The depth analysis of the
moves into the trans-human realm of organic processes as the ground of natural
Female bodies live the openness of the human body and its insertion into the
life of other beings viscerally. They bear and feed other human beings, and the
being. But today the invisible, intangible toxicity of female blood and milk force
us to think beyond the boundaries of our skins, and to consider relationships that
-
logical, feminist ethics must address this more than human relationship. Through
depersonalize the extinction of other species as the erasure of “objects,” “set out
species is happening in our bodies.
48 Merleau-Ponty, , p. 181.
49 Ibid., p. 267.
50 Merleau-Ponty, , p. 4.
