as part of Schwanger werden können

01.04. – 03.04.2022

How we think and talk about pregnancy shapes how we live society: Why are being pregnant and being (able to be) pregnant so rarely a topic in philosophy, art and politics? Around the productions „Virtual Wombs“ by Anna Fries and Malu Peeters and „Mater Dolorosa Bleed“ by The Agency we would like to get into conversation about a topic that is omnipresent and yet rarely discussed on the big stage.

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Antje Schrupp

SCHWANGERWERDENKÖNNEN

Vortrag + Diskussion Talks & Workshops Social/Urban Movements

Man sires the child, woman births it. Only women can become pregnant. Mothers have been pregnant. Paternity can be tested. – If this is what you think, your thinking is wrong, according to political scientist and blogger Antje Schrupp. Being able to become pregnant does not necessarily also beget a desire to have children. Also, pregnancy does not necessarily end with childbirth. Everything is more complex than it was thought to be!

All the more reason to start talking about the topic, because the way we think and talk about pregnancy informs the manner in which we live within a society. It fuels decisions about gender relations, control of one’s own and external bodies, and about our ideas of communal life. It also puts its unsubtle stamp on the current discussion on technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Antje Schrupp sheds light on being able to become pregnant from a political, a legal, and an historical perspective in a lecture with a subsequent talk. Women lived in constant pregnancy in former times, such was their fate. Nowadays, in this country, a woman needs excellent reasons to even consider becoming pregnant. Pregnancy and having children are hindrances to her career and will impede her life. Seen on the scale of an eighty-year life expectancy, women, today, are “barely pregnant”. But what rights and obligations arise if they are anyway? What discrimination follows? Do their wombs belong to them? Questions, carrying a burning currency ,that also affect men, in fact, all human beings.

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Antje Schrupp ist Politikwissenschaftlerin, Journalistin und Bloggerin mit den Schwerpunkten Philosophie, Feminismus, Religionen und Weltanschauungen sowie Geschichte des Sozialismus und Anarchismus. Sie ist unter anderem Expertin für die Rolle der Frauen in der Pariser Kommune. Zu ihren Publikationen zählen die Sachbücher „Methusalems Mütter“ und „Was wäre wenn?“ sowie „Vote for Victoria!“, eine Biografie der ersten amerikanischen Präsidentschaftskandidatin Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927). 2019 erschien ihr Essay „Schwangerwerdenkönnen“.

credits

Gefördert im Rahmen des Bündnisses internationaler Produktionshäuser von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien.