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Enunciating, organising and controlling oneself: modes of female subjectivation

The purpose of this article is to analyse the way in which the motherhood role is organised in the media, producing specific modes of female subjectivation. Based on a Foucaultian framework, I characterise enunciating oneself, organising oneself and controlling oneself as techniques of the self used by the mother-subjects. I thus undertake a discursive analysis of two sets of materials: one consisting of articles from the magazines Veja and Caras, from 1992 to 2002, about "famous mothers" (Cássia Eller, Luciana Gimenez, Vera Fischer and Xuxa); and, the other, consisting of articles published in the magazine Crescer, between January 2001 and July 2002. I show how this mechanism organises these techniques of the self in order to create a logic where the mother-individual is asked to focus on herself and consider that taking care of herself is taking care of the other (her son) and, in this way, leading the mother-individuals to recognise themselves as objects visible to themselves and to enunciate themselves as subjects transformed by maternal practices.

mechanism; motherhood; media; modes of subjectivation


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