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Philosopher and psychoanalyst Elsa Godart condemns the overly critical view that society pushes women to have on themselves. And the equation of their daily life became impossible.
Madame Figaro. – You have studied many new modern behaviors and are currently working on “chaos phenomenology”. What do you think about the collected testimonials? our investigation into female asphyxia?
Elsa Godart. – I think that the biggest victims of the current system, modernity and capitalism are mothers. I am a single parent of two deeply desired children, ages 9 and 7, and face this hellish situation of “impossible motherhood” every day. Impossible, because what concerns the domestic sphere, the effects, remain the responsibility of women, which Carol Gilligan explains very well in her Ethics of Care. The social construction resulting from patriarchy forces them to adopt this position of care all the time; they are the nurse, the nanny, the teacher at the same time. This immediately places motherhood in a sacrificial logic, as women are constantly torn between two impossibilities: to take care of children and to realize themselves in the sense of creating creativity. And what can we say if we don’t feel like we’re doing a job, but rather have a passion, an identity? It is irreconcilable.
So asphyxia is just a symptom, the tip of the iceberg.
Absolutely. And it’s not a big moral conflict. The core of the problem is everyday life. That’s where everything is at stake in this fight, this war. When you manage to put it all together, especially when you’re a single mom, it’s always DIY, System D. And a miracle. The constant and uninterrupted accumulation of our days is causing radical, slow destruction. At 21:30 I am exhausted, empty, no one left. I often repeat. “No one is asked to do the impossible but us.”
Is sin born from this impossibility?
I would rather talk about heterogeneous guilt, in the sense that guilt is natural to the subject, it is a moral principle, while guilt comes from outside. Society sends us back to these questions, which cannot find a definitive confirmation. “Am I a good mother? A good philosopher? Doubt creeps in there. And, therefore, a self-evaluation of the “superego” order of judgment that makes us feel bad. We feel guilty, ashamed, and therefore isolated. I think this is the key word in your topic, this isolation of mothers for fear of being judged or judged.
On the contrary, they would have a great need for recognition…
First of all, I would say the need for knowledge. Let someone, including his partner, know, see what he does every day that has become so complicated. We often tell them. “Stop complaining!” But this complaint is their only place of resistance. You talk about suffocation, I would specifically mention the silence that society forces women into, which is nothing more than murder by proxy. This is exclusively a political issue. what good would a patriarchal society do to get them out of this broken state? This would reveal their full power, which is immense. And their power, they raise the next generation…
So how to get out of it?
I think we should save ourselves by not waiting for this recognition from others. We will never again fully belong to ourselves, but we have the power to make our desire emerge, beyond the desire of the other, in an ethic of sincerity. It is ethics in the sense of practice. we do not have to achieve results. We must force ourselves to maintain a social life, lightness, joy. We must save our skin.
(1) empty lives Elsa Godart, Ed. Armand Colin (2023).
Source: Le Figaro
