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Mothers of Solitude: Childlessness and Intersubjectivity in the Upper Zambezi
Author(s) -
Silva Sónia
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1409.2009.01037.x
Subject(s) - intersubjectivity , personhood , solitude , sentimentality , normative , sadness , compassion , performative utterance , psychology , psychoanalysis , sociology , aesthetics , social psychology , epistemology , philosophy , theology , psychotherapist , social science , anger
SUMMARY Drawing on normative cultural forms and interpersonal encounters, I seek to convey the sense of sadness and devastation associated with childlessness in the Upper Zambezi, and to interpret that sense as a pathology of severed intersubjectivity. I also argue that as irremediable as this pathology might seem, elderly childless women may momentarily revert to personhood through compassion, itself experienced as the restoration of intersubjective ties. The conditions of personhood and nonpersonhood, in addition to being structural and processual, are emotional, performative, and intersubjective as well.