Starting from the already politically charged battlefield of the female body, Deirdre Conlon and Marcus Carvalho turn a critical eye to pregnancy. A point where multiple discourses converge to provide insights and explanations of the politics of maternity, the pregnant woman occupies a unique place in contemporary culture, and is often placed at odds with powers that attempt to regulate and colonize it. For the simple fact that the maternal body is where new life gestates, this space can be a source of great agency; for the simple fact that this powerful body is a growing female body, this space is also targeted by a variety of forces that would try to contain, make sense, and ultimately establish paternal authority over the maternal subject. By examining the representations of maternal and paternal authority as exhibited in contemporary film and television, the authors argue that it is primarily in how we represent ourselves to ourselves that these anxieties of the body are manifested. Circumventing simplistic critiques of pregnancy which equate it with "reproduction," Conlon and Carvalho open up the radical possibilities offered by this resistant and resilient, if at times compromised, third space.

Spaces of Motherhood

Deirdre Conlon and Marcos Carvalho

Social space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other products: rather it subsumes things produced, and encompasses their interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity -- their (relative) order and/or (relative) disorder. It is the outcome of a sequence and set of operations, and thus cannot be reduced to the rank of a simple object. (Lefebvre 1994: 73)

<1> In this paper our aim is to critically evaluate motherhood, as a social production that is deeply imbricated with the ideologies of patriarchy, technology and capitalism. We ground our analysis in Henri Lefebvre's (1994) theory on the social production of space and Barbara Katz-Rothman's (2000) examination of motherhood as it is constituted through ideology. Further, we draw on Smith's (1997) observation that it is possible to examine the production of space and materialization of capitalism at different scales; in this paper we focus specifically on the scale of the body and of the house in order to consider the ways these spaces participate in the production of motherhood. We use popular culture as the site for our analysis. We draw on a number of films -- The Next Best Thing (2000), Gattaca (1997), The Stepford Wives (1975), The Way of the Gun (2000) and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992) -- as well as the popular television series -- "Queer as Folk" (2000) -- as exemplars of depictions of motherhood as embodied experience and lived spaces that work to reproduce particular representations of motherhood in accordance with the aforementioned ideologies. Ultimately, our goal is not merely to explicate and critique but also to think through the possibilities that the theorists mentioned above offer in producing new representations and practices of motherhood. Before taking our analysis to specific spaces such as the body or the house, we need to lay out the theoretical frame our analysis.

<2> Our understanding of space as a social product is derived from Lefebvre's (1994) analysis of its production. Lefebvre identifies three "moments" in the production of space: spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space. Spatial practice refers to the way we perceive our surroundings and ourselves as we negotiate their use. Representations of space can be seen as the symbols and ideas associated with institutional knowledge and representational spaces denote the enactment of lived places that are produced and modified over time. These three aspects of space cannot be disentangled. In fact, they create this unit that we, from now on, will simply call "space." Our interpretation of Lefebvre’s analysis is that space is a primordial condition to the analysis and experience of every human phenomenon, thus motherhood is as an identity that necessitates, while it also produces, a space in its three-dimensional aspects, namely: the mental, the physical, and the social. More specifically, in this paper the questions we seek to address include how are the body and the house produced by, and how do they participate in, the production of motherhood?

<3> In order to answer these questions we take the following path: First, we reflect upon the problem of the colonization of the space of the body and the space of the house through what Lefevbre calls concrete abstractions. Second, we analyze the body and the house as spaces where and through which motherhood is constructed. In this we use exemplars from popular culture to highlight these themes. As previously noted, ultimately our project is to build a critical reflection that could corroborate in liberating the actuality of the spaces of the body and of the house in order to allow them to become spaces of representation, spaces that contribute to the process of constructing new representations and practices of motherhood.

<4> According to Lefebvre the three "moments" that produce space are interconnected in a sequential manner. Conventionally "space has been lived before it has been conceptualized and practice has generated and to some degree enveloped representation" (Stewart 1995: 610). However, there has been a shift in the arrangement of these "moments": now representations precede perceptions and practice, thus the production of space has been colonized by concrete abstractions -- representations that take over the production of space by imposing an image or definition of space (e.g. the body, the house), in order to regulate its use or occupation. As a result space becomes a means through which social relationships e.g. motherhood, are controlled and reproduced, in this way prohibiting the invention or recreation of new modes of action. Consequently, the subject becomes encapsulated into a fixed structure that is always read as permanent and impossible while the possibility for agency and transformation is negated.

<5> Concrete abstractions function through a materialization process and are nurtured through dialectics in which certain kinds of ideologies, images, concepts and discourses, become, through social acts, manifest in the environment. As an example, consider the images and representations that architects and urban planners have designed and later built based upon these ideas. Not only do the social representations that we have of these spaces work to regulate and normalize particular ways that we use them, but their actual concrete form, material structure, and organization do so as well.

<6> One such representation that's crucial in our analysis of motherhood is the home as a "private space." In a critique of housing and urban design, Hayden observes that from the design of appliances as single-purpose and privately used commodities, to the layout of individual homes as spaces organized around particular activities such as cooking, sleeping or entertaining, and beyond this, to the implementation of zoning practices wherein "the typical dwelling will usually be physically removed from any shared community space" (1980: 171), the binary relation between public and private space is reified. On a different scale, Saegert discusses the symbolic associations culture attaches to women and suburbs, and men and cities. She notes that "urban life and men tend to be thought of as more aggressive, assertive, definers of important world events...women and suburbs share domesticity, repose, closeness to nature" (1980: S97). In this way feminist theory has shown that architecture and urban planning have been means through which women are identified with and relegated to live only in the private space, while men are given the domain of both public and private spheres. In our analysis we will focus on the way spaces are produced to structure and organize motherhood as we know it.

<7> In addition to Lefebvre's analysis of the social production of space, in our discussion of motherhood we also adopt the framework developed by Katz-Rothman in her book Recreating Motherhood (2000). She suggests that scholars need to put the different aspects of motherhood together without penalizing womanhood. In her analysis, Katz-Rothman notes that the experience of motherhood in America is shaped and instituted by three ideologies, namely the ideology of patriarchy, the ideology of technology, and the ideology of capitalism. She states, these ideologies "are not separate ways of thinking. Instead, [they are] strands of a tightly wound braid" (2000: 13). In putting together ideologies and space, we propose that ideologies are materialized over time in specific spatial realities. The difficulty in revealing ideological effects in space, and in general, comes from the fact that ideology does not work through violent repression, but through disciplinary power (Foucault 1977). Therefore, ideologies work

by producing new objects and subjects of knowledge, by inciting and channeling desires, generating and focusing individual and group energies, and establishing bodily norms and techniques for observing, monitoring, and controlling bodily movements, processes, and capacities. (Sawicki 1999: 193)

In order to reveal the effects of ideology on the spaces of motherhood, we want to draw attention to and critically evaluate the concrete abstractions that are imposed upon women in spaces of motherhood and upon the space of the house -- the private space of women and mothers.

<8> To reiterate the dialogue thus far, spaces are social products that function as a way of reinforcing ideology. Ideologies and spaces are linked by concrete abstractions, and ideologies, through concrete abstractions, work in different spatial scales. Before developing our analysis of motherhood as a socially constructed identity, produced through spaces of the body and the house, and in relation to the ideologies of patriarchy, technology, and capitalism, we want to make a point that symbolically and culturally marks the beginning of motherhood.

<9> One of the first images that culture offers to us, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is that of mother earth. Having his body made from clay, man received life from God’s words. So, our first dwelling was the womb of mother earth, and it became our first house. The words of God are the seeds that have fertilized mother earth and created man. Therefore, the earth, like the woman’s womb, became our first house and the genesis of our existence. This cultural representation reflects even today the tied relationship between the house and the body, more specifically the woman’s body and the house. Like the earth, the house is under the control and domain of man. As a result, the woman’s body is identified with mother earth [nature] and men are identified with God, as the fertilizers, cultivators, and conquerors of earth.

<10> This narrative can be viewed as a kind of historical concrete abstraction. It also marks a way into this specific reflection on the relationship between the body, the house and motherhood under patriarchy, technology, and capitalism. This narrative can be recreated in different ways wherein the woman’s body participates as a productive agent in the occupation and production of the house. In order to understand this process more clearly we turn to popular culture to examine a number of representations through which motherhood is produced.

Motherhood -- The Space of the Body and of the House under Patriarchy

<11> Patriarchy technically means the "rule of fathers." In this sense, women are recognized in reference to men as their wives and mothers of their babies. The central problem here is that as a consequence of this patriarchal ideology, the relationship between the mother, the baby, and the father, and then, their relation with other instances of society, is colonized by a specific idea of kinship that is materialized in terms of blood ties. These blood ties are normalized by the name of the father in a paternal succession. As a result, the bodies of the mother, of the baby, and of the father are perceived as biological realities. Therefore the relationship between them becomes naturalized and controlled by laws that reflect and reinforce the idea that nature [blood] is more important than nurture [social relationship] (Katz-Rothman 2000).

<12> Taken from this biological point of view, the body of the pregnant woman becomes a passive object, a natural reality through which the man's seed, the baby, becomes a material reality. The body of the father is presented as the real font of life, the organic fertilizer that produces babies. Thus, the body of the woman, and the baby's body within her body, become a means for displaying male fertility. The husband's control over the wife's body and the power of the father over the child’s body are based in his capacity to generate life.

<13> This reality is equally evident in motherhood today and is also experienced by mothers who adopt a so-called "alternative" lifestyle. An example from the recent popular television series "Queer as Folk" is illustrative. The fall 2000 series was presented by the Show Time channel as a "no limits" representation of gay and lesbian life. One story line revolves around two of the main characters, a lesbian couple -- Lindsay and Melanie who decide to have a baby. In order to get pregnant, Lindsay uses the sperm of a gay friend -- Brian -- who, among other things, represents a gay man who is completely "out"; he is a character that might be described as an anti-heterosexual fighter. However, when the baby's first birthday arrives, Brian takes a highly conservative position on fatherhood. One of the baby's lesbian parents is Jewish and decides to have the traditional Jewish ritual of circumcision performed, in order to present the baby to the community, and to initiate him into the customs of her cultural group. In the middle of the ceremony Brian arrives and interrupts the ceremony claiming paternal power over the child because he is the biological father. When questioned by one of the baby’s parents about his authority to stop the circumcision ritual he states: "I am the biological father and that gives me more rights than you." By his words, the sperm donor/biological father invokes a concrete abstraction wherein the father orders and controls the bodies within the space of the home. As a result, the viewer sees how social relations, even "alternative" families, are dominated by the rule and the representation of the biological father.

<14> Coupled with this, the scene demonstrates how the space of the home is implicated in the production of patriarchal ideology and control over the identity of mothers. As noted earlier and extending back to Greek tradition, the space of the home has been designated as women's space. Wigley (1992) notes that, through the ages, women have been thought of as lacking internal self-control, and without this an identity is impossible. The imposition of external laws has thus been deemed necessary in order to protect women and to provide them with a self-identity. Historically, these external laws have taken the form of patriarchal rules whereby women are relegated to the interior space of the home. While the association between women and home still prevails, the containment of women within the home seems implausible in the context of "Queer as Folk" and in much of Western culture today. How then is patriarchal ideology exacted in the private space of the 21st century home? Wigley notes that patriarchal rule is imposed by an elaborate system of surveillance and control which enables men to leave the private space of the home to engage in their traditional role as public figures.

<15> In the scene from "Queer as Folk," the identity of the mother can be understood as doubly disruptive. On one hand the embodied mother disrupts notions of a fixed and bounded corporeal identity (Donovan 2001). Coupled with this, the presence of two mothers, and the apparent absence of the father, suggests that this space is governed by a different set of rules. How then is patriarchal rule invoked in the private space of this home? To account for this we again turn to Wigley who observes that, typically, in discussions of sexuality and space "the house is literally left behind, intact, as if innocent of the violence it appears to frame" (1992: 331). In explaining how the space of the home is imbricated with patriarchal ideology he draws on Alberti's analogy of the house as a spider's web:

You know the spider and how he constructs his web. All the threads spread out in rays, each of which, however long, has its source, its roots or birthplace, as we might say, at the center...Let the father of a family do likewise. Let him arrange his affairs and place them so that all look up to him alone as the head, so that all are directed by him and by him attached to secure foundations. (Alberti 1969, cited in Wigley 1992: 339)

Considering this analogy with reference to the scene from "Queer as Folk," and extending it more generally, whether the father is present or absent, the space of the house, the bodies therein, and the biological father are always entwined in a system of surveillance and in the imposition of patriarchal ideology in the spaces of mothering.

<16> Another example of the social production of the identity of mother and father under patriarchy is shown in the recent movie directed by John Schlesinger -- The Next Best Thing. Here, a gay man provides a paternal model for a child who is supposedly his biological son. The plot revolves around two friends, Abbey and Robert, both in their late thirties. She is a yoga teacher, whose dream is to build a family. He is a gardener working for wealthy families; his lover has recently died of AIDS. It is July 4th, Independence Day in the U.S., Abbey and Robert get drunk and have sex. The next day they argue about their sexual encounter and refrain from speaking to one another for some time afterwards. Some time later, Abbey discovers that she's pregnant, she believes that Robert is the biological father of the child, therefore, decides to look for him and proposes that they raise the child together. However, the viewer later learns, the biological father of the baby is Abbey's former boyfriend following a blood test that the child has to complete. After seven years living together, Abbey falls in love with a heterosexual man and moves out of the house she shares with Robert to live with her new boyfriend, taking the child with her. When this happens, Robert decides to go to court to fight for what he believes is his child. It is interesting to observe how the possibility of Robert gaining guardianship of the child changes as he discovers that he is not the biological father. It is not his gay life that's significant, but the fact that he is not the biological father, hence, not the "real" one, that results in the court’s decision to grant guardianship rights to the mother. In the end Robert is even denied the right to visit the child.

<17> In this film, the ideology of patriarchy prevails as the rule that governs parenting and consequently, the social production of the mother and the father. In other words, the formal, institutionalized knowledge, in Lefebvre's terms -- representations of space -- attributed to the biological seed takes precedence over perceptions and practice, the lived, social space that's inhabited by Robert, Abbey and their child. Katz-Rothman notes that "parenting is a social relationship, not a genetic connection" (2000: 82). In The Next Best Thing the relevance of this social space is dismissed because of the cultural weight of patriarchal ideology.

<18> Related to this, the private space of the house, where Robert and Abbey have cohabited, as common law husband and wife/father and mother, for seven years is opposed to the public space of the street. We noted earlier how the dichotomy between public and private space impacts the identity of women and men. The Next Best Thing illustrates how another social group -- gay men -- is disenfranchised from the public sphere. As another example, we can again think about the scene from "Queer as Folk," where, even though it is a gay man who exercises his patriarchal rights, this occurs within the private space of the home. Effectively, the dichotomy between public and private space legitimates the biological father as a concrete abstraction, while the relationships that take place in the private space of the home are erased from view, thence from "reality."

<19> Thus, in order for patriarchal ideology to operate and show its effects, the seed of the biological father must dominate the corporeal space of motherhood as well as the baby's body. Coupled with this the sacred space of the house guarantees male power and control over the woman as mother and the body of the baby. Women need the house of a man or to have a man in the house to be identified as women, have sex, procreate, and be identified as mothers. Babies need a house to grow up and to foster their entrance into society, thereby moving from the protective private space of the home into the "dangerous" realm of the public. Hence, under patriarchal ideology, the spaces of women's, men's and babies' bodies as well as the social spaces that these bodies occupy are colonized by a concrete abstraction that materializes their relationship as a biological reality -- the seed. As such, the body of the mother functions solely as the space whose natural mission is to grow the seed of a man. The body of the baby is just a result of an organic process in which the sperm and the egg grows within the space of the mother's body. The house is the space that legitimates the mother and the baby, creating for them a place in society. Even when another man, as in The Next Best Thing, or another woman, as in "Queer as Folk," inhabits the space of the house, it is the rule of the biological father that's the governing rule. This perception, design, and functioning of the house perpetuates this space as a male heterosexual one. Therefore, social space is segmented as private and public, and there is no relation between them and the events happening therein. In this way, culture not only dichotomizes space, but also separates it from its contents; we fail to see that the same body walks in and out of the house, performing activities that make the house and the street interconnected, therefore creating a relationship between public and private. In the same way, the baby's body within the mother interconnects them, and her/his birth interconnects the mother, the father, and the house.

<20> Even though these examples are not extracted from so-called reality, we should note that The Next Best Thing is based on a true story. More importantly, we approach these "truths" following Foucault (1994) who observes that an experience is neither true nor false, it is always a fiction, something constructed. To recapitulate, in these examples of the experience of motherhood we find the main ingredients of patriarchal ideology, namely the importance of the seed as that which defines kinship under patriarchal ideology. We also find the expression of the fundamental power and functioning of patriarchal ideology in relation to motherhood and parenting more generally. The biological father is the real thing. His sperm or its equivalent in the mother, the egg, has greater value than any social relationship developed over time in the lives of people. As Katz-Rothman puts it, "in a patriarchal system, when people talk about blood ties, they are talking about a genetic tie, a connection by seed...The maternal tie is based on the growing of children. The patriarchal tied is based on genetics, the act of impregnating" (2000: 19). This is clearly the case in the popular cultural representations of motherhood and parenting presented here. In both "Queer as Folk" and The Next Best Thing the ideology of patriarchy pervades spaces of motherhood regardless of the materiality of kinship or parenting arrangements and produces women as mothers, men, and children who are governed by the rule of the father. As part of this process too dichotomies between public and private space are re-enacted and serve to further colonize the space of motherhood as dominated by patriarchal ideology. Of course, men's control over women and children is no longer based simply on his unique seed, instead, as Katz-Rothman notes men's economic superiority as well as other privileges of a male dominated social system have become increasingly important. This leads us to the question of motherhood as it is produced through the ideologies of technology and capitalism.

Motherhood -- The Space of the Body and of the House Under Technology

<21> Just as woman has historically been identified with nature, in opposition to this, man has been identified as the producer of technology. Historically technology has been man's way of conquering nature, and perhaps, other men. Through technology, man not only becomes the conqueror of nature, but he also exercises control over the woman's body. Following Lefebvre's perspective on the production of concrete abstractions, consider the view (image/representation) that technology is neutral. As Katz-Rothman observes:

one first definition of technology is that it is just a tool -- not good and not bad, just a neutral tool that can be used for whatever purpose. The purposes that technology can be put to can be good or bad. But the technology itself? It's neutral. (2000: 27)

However, this vision of technology as simply a tool is not coherent with viewing it through the lens of its practicality. In other words, any technological existence was originally thought of, and built, in order to fulfill a specific need or objective. Durbin notes:

In fact, no particular technology, construed as a technological object, gadget, process or system, or even an isolated bit of technological knowledge or know-how can be morally neutral. It was designed or conceived for some purpose, and any such purpose is subject to moral and ethical evaluation. (1980: xxxi)

<22> This statement places technology exactly in the realm of Lefebvre's concrete abstractions. Technological objects, gadgets, processes, or systems are of themselves subjected to a way of thinking of, or to use Lefebvre's term -- representations of -- the reality or spaces that they claim to transform. Technology, in any of its subsumed forms, is already the result of a process of materialization in which technological devices are created to guarantee a certain kind of relationship between people, and between people and objects in the world. Lefebvre identifies this relationship between space and technology as an instance of dominated space: "let us consider dominated (and dominant) space, which is to say a space transformed -- and mediated -- by technology" (1994: 164). In our discussion of motherhood we argue that an ideology of technology directly influences the production of technological objects, tools etc., and their relationship between the mother, the baby, and the father within the space of the house.

<23> To assume this is already to uncover one of the main principles and effects of the ideology of technology -- namely neutrality. Technology as a neutral event produces the segmentation of space and blinds the relationship between space and its contents. Consider the use, and images, of ultrasound screening in pregnancy wherein the body of the mother is considered completely isolated from that of the baby. This "machine-like" way of looking at human functioning can be clearly observed in many of the inventions and applications of new reproductive technologies, or in the various machines that surround the baby, the mother and the father, throughout the childbearing process. In the effort to guarantee the production of a healthy baby the following questions are inevitable these days. What gadgets, tools and machines need to be bought? How will these objects be deployed within the baby's room to ensure her/his comfort? How do these technological objects enhance the performance of women’s bodies, thereby making them better mothers?

<24> These questions, as well as the responses they invite, must, clearly, be understood within the particular context of Western culture. At the same time, scholars are increasingly giving consideration to the braiding of technologies and globalization (see Barr 2001). For example, it can be noted with reference to medical technology, that the West, and more specifically the U.S., has frequently been considered a progressive and innovative leader in areas of technological advancement. The hegemony and subsequent "truth" of this narrative has been the source of a great deal of debate within feminist theory (for example Sawicki 1991, Treichler 1990). From our perspective, neither technology nor culture can be considered neutral. Here, our specific aim is to critically consider the ideology that technology is neutral with reference to motherhood. In the following section we want to critically examine motherhood in two different ways and at different scales. First, we look at the identification between the woman's body and the use of technology to make the baby’s first house -- the woman's body -- a safe and healthy place. Second, we look at the house, the physical and social space occupied by the mother and baby, as an extension of the woman's body. In this process we again draw on popular cultural representations of motherhood, as presented in the films Gattaca and The Stepford Wives to explicate the relationships between the ideology of technology and motherhood as a social production of space.

<25> The analysis of the institution of medicine allows us to see how technology has been imposed on the woman's body in order to make it more productive. With technological advances in medicine, women as mothers have been reduced to machines, by being transformed into patients under the control and surveillance of doctors and their technological apparatus. From conception to pregnancy to childbirth, women have been taught to trust doctors, often at the expense of denying their own knowledge of their bodies. Bringing this to another institution and to the scale of the house, technological advances have facilitated the transformation of the house into an infirmary. Now women have monitors, sterilization equipment, nebulizers, and even "diaper genies" at their disposal. Through this process mothers, and mothers-to-be, have become the nurses of the doctor's patient -- his majesty -- the baby.

<26> The science fiction film Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol, provides an example of reproductive technology perfected to produce genetically perfect human beings. Described by Janet Maslin, in a New York Times review, as "a film set in the 'not-too distant future' [that] succeeds as a scarily apt extension of present day attitudes" (1997), Gattaca centers around two characters, Vincent, a "god child," conceived "naturally" in utero, and Eugene produced through in vitro technology, thereby eliminating imperfections and securing a genetic quotient second to none. The different modes of reproduction employed with these baby boys proffers a vastly different trajectory for each. Through the powers of technology and surveillance, every millimeter of Vincent's body, from saliva to dead skin cells, is encoded with his social standing as an 'invalid' person, while Eugene's cells ascribe him with validity and privilege. However, Eugene's destiny as a champion athlete is interrupted by an apparent accident which renders him paralyzed and cuts short the possibility for his participation as a valid member of society. Thereafter his genetic identity becomes a valuable commodity, and Vincent, in pursuit of his lifelong ambition to become an astronaut and embark on a mission to Titan, purchases Eugene's superior identity with the help of a gene-broker. The film details the precision and intricacy with which technology is employed to transform Vincent's imperfect genes and body into one that cannot be distinguished, by Gattaca's technologically sophisticated tools of surveillance, from Eugene's, effectively putting perfect technologies into service for perfect (re)production.

<27> Like The Next Best Thing, Gattaca presents a society not based in reality, yet it offers insight into the ideology of technology and its impact on motherhood. In Gattaca, parents seeking the assurance of a successful life for their child find that choosing technology over nature becomes "essential." So, with advances in reproductive technology the requirement of a woman's body as the inaugural space of motherhood will be eliminated. This reality is not so far fetched in today's culture. In relation to the woman's body and the baby, medical technology has produced the fetus. This fetus and the woman's body wherein the fetus is housed, must be submitted to a plethora of ever more sophisticated machines, all in an effort to ensure the delivery of a safe and healthy "normal" baby. Related to this reliance on machinery, the embodied experience of pregnancy entails the production of fetal images; as Petchesky describes it "the fetus as we know it is a fetish" (1997: 137). Following this, Katz-Rothman observes:

The fetus in utero has become a metaphor for "man" in space, floating free, attached only by the umbilical cord to the spaceship. But where is the mother in that metaphor? She has become an empty space. (1986: 114)

<28> While in Gattaca, technology has done away with the need for, and value of, a mother's body altogether, the ideology of technology, which pervades/invades the bodies of mothers-to-be in Western culture today, is one that simultaneously erases the woman's body while holding onto its importance as a machine for the production of healthy babies. In this way patriarchy, technology and capitalism are imbricated in the mother's body. In Gattaca body parts, for instance legs and hair, as well as substances exuded from the body -- urine, dead skin cells, saliva and so on -- are precious commodities. In the pregnant body the uterus has value as the space where the seed of the father is housed. Blum (1999) discusses how women's breasts have been commodified in the labor to produce healthy babies. In the effort to secure the woman's body, and more specifically the uterus, as a viable commodity, there is an increasing reliance on technology, and as in Gattaca, the availability of more and more advanced technologies is associated with increasingly diffuse, unlimited mechanisms of surveillance and social control.

<29> In the case of reproductive technologies and the spaces of motherhood, Petchesky observes:

Despite their benefits for individual women, amniocentesis, in vitro fertilization, electronic fetal monitoring, routine cesarean deliveries, ultrasound, and a range of heroic "fetal therapies" (both in utero and ex utero)...have the effect of carving out more and more space /time for obstetrical "management" of pregnancy. (1997: 138)

Therefore, mother's bodies as spaces where the fetus is produced are only legible with technological interventions, and through technology maternal bodies are subjected to disciplinary power. Consequently, the ideology of technology is revealed to be far from neutral. Pregnancy and motherhood as social practices are not important, instead what matters most is to have perfect machines produce perfect babies. As Katz-Rothman notes, the ideology of technology "is a way of thinking about the world in mechanical, industrial terms" (2000: 28). With this ideology, the woman's body and the production of her identity as mother is embodied in the image of a well-regulated machine.

<30> We can also look at the house as an extension of the woman's body where the ideology of technology is also pervasive. Forty observes:

As a metaphor for a woman's body, the house is an image long established in poetry, mythology, and the unconscious: it was, for instance, one of the more potent symbols for female sexuality picked on by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams...The correspondence of the house and the body affects each other and establishes an identity between them; among its effects is the supposition that a woman is under an obligation to take care of her house as she cares for her body. (1995: 104)

This identification process is coupled with the patriarchal need to ensure male continuity; consequently, the house, its furniture, tools, and labor saving machines, become a main technological tool in the potentialization of women's maternal function. The house as a technological device, its appearance and efficiency, produces woman as a good wife and mother. It is filled with labor saving machines that function as aggregated parts of the woman's body. Thus technology and the woman's identity are forever intertwined and associated with parental care, and more specifically, with motherhood and "intelligent" home management. Whatever is missing in the woman's body, in order to ensure the best care for the child, is added in terms of technological tools.

<31> The Stepford Wives, directed by Bryan Forbes, presents exactly this fantasy. The film is steeped in patriarchal ideology and illustrates how technology and patriarchy might work to construct the perfect woman/machine. The power of these two ideologies in regulating the space of the woman's body is conveyed concisely at the end of the film, where the main character, Joanna, has been lured to the Stepford Men's Association, in order to undergo her transformation from a biologically "real" woman to housefrau/drone/robot. The chairman of the Stepford Men's Association -- Dale, who throughout the film is referred to as Diz because he used to work at Disney, is waiting there for her. Diz reassures Joanna that she has the wrong idea about what's been happening to the women of the Stepford community. Joanna, distraught because her children, a metaphor for her identity, have been taken away from her, asks "why?"; Diz replies, "Because we can. We've found a way of doing it and it's just perfect; it's perfect for us and perfect for you." With these words, the rule of fathers and the power of technology are coupled in the production of a woman's body that functions as the ideal of femininity, the ultimate housewife, and the perfect mother, thereby materializing the concrete abstractions that govern the spaces of motherhood in the woman's body.

<32> Though this film also falls in the category of science fiction, it is easy to imagine mothers today as robots. Picture this: A mother enters a shopping mall with a baby in a stroller. As she browses through commodities, the baby starts to cry. But not to worry! She is armored with all the equipment the baby could possibly need -- a container of Similac, a bottle, a pacifier for when the baby cries but is no longer hungry, a pad for changing the baby's wet diaper, disposable diapers, a miniature mobile to stimulate the baby's visual development, a rattle to enable the baby to inform her that she/he is there and on and on -- mother as cyborg. Amongst the ironies of this material reality is that as spaces of motherhood are mediated by technology, they are ultimately dominated by technology. So, for example, women have added pacifiers, or rubber nipples to their "mother armored" bodies, when within their own bodies they have these "tools." In this sense technology has alienated the mother’s body from the woman's body, producing instead a dominated space that is "closed, sterilized and emptied out" (Lefebvre 1994: 165) and supplemented with prosthetics. Haraway (1991:178) notes, "there is no fundamental, ontological separation in our formal knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic." Similarly, in the instances presented here with the ideology of technology the mother's body is colonized by a representation of space that serves to obscure some of the possibilities of the woman's body as a space of mothering.

Motherhood -- The Space of the Body and of the House under Capitalism

<33> Katz-Rothman notes that where the ideology of technology "dehumanizes people" advancing a mechanized image of motherhood, the ideology of capitalism "adds that not only is the body a collection of parts, its parts become commodities...the essential fluids of life -- blood, milk, and semen -- are all for sale" (1982: 35). So shifting from the ideology of technology, the question is no longer how are spaces of motherhood produced in the body, but rather, how, under capitalism, are spaces of motherhood produced in body parts? To address this question, we can look to many aspects of motherhood, for example, the physical labor of mothering, the commodification of the child or of a woman's breast. But we take as a starting point perhaps the smallest facet of the mothering phenomenon, yet one that under patriarchy has the greatest value attached -- sperm.

<34> In this analysis, the movie The Way of the Gun, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, serves as an example. The plot revolves around the kidnapping of Robin, a mother-to-be, who has been hired to carry out the pregnancy and birth of a child, for a millionaire and well-connected gangster and his attractive wife. The husband is desperate for an heir, the wife, Francesca, unwilling to have her beautiful body "disfigured" by pregnancy; the solution is to rent a mother for nine months.

<35> The film opens with two men sitting in a waiting room at a sperm bank, they are down-at-heel hence their trip to a sperm bank, where a few minutes of their time and some bodily fluid hold the promise of considerable monetary gain. As they are interviewed these men eagerly promote their sperm as a valuable commodity; they work hard to convince the screening interviewer that they're not only intelligent, witty and talented but also "real" men with an aggressive streak. As they wait for their opportunity to "donate" sperm, these men overhear a telephone conversation wherein someone at the clinic is talking about the amount of money to be paid by the millionaire for the services of a surrogate mother. Driven by their own need for money, and perhaps their angst associated with the realization that their sperm is not as valuable as that of the millionaire, these two desperados decide to kidnap the surrogate mother who is ready to give birth at any moment, and demand a "king's ransom" for the safe return of the much desired heir.

<36> As the movie continues, a series of chases, hold-ups, and shoot-outs occur as bodyguards, gangsters, and kidnappers attempt to regain control of their resource -- the sperm-turned-into-fetus in the surrogate mother's body. In numerous scenes the mother is held at gunpoint, but all concerned are careful to aim their guns at her but not at the baby. As Katz-Rothman notes "the mother's capital is her body; it is her property but it is cheap." Coupled with the ideology of patriarchy "women may simply be seen to own the space in which fetuses [the property of men] are housed" (2000: 44-45).

<37> It is also interesting to note that the woman who will take on the role of "social mother" to the baby rarely makes an appearance. On one occasion, she is seen sitting at home awaiting the arrival of the baby, on another she is seen having sex with a man who is not her husband. Thus, although this woman is consigned to the private space of the home, she manages to disrupt the control that her position, as a mother-in-waiting, and wife confined to the interior space of the home, is supposed to confer. While Francesca's use of the home interrupts the ideology of patriarchal control, it cannot be separated from her privileged class standing, and when contrasted with the experience of the biological mother, Francesca's actions invoke the ideology of capitalism. Robin is presented as valuable only as a womb. Even then her value lies in the fact that she is carrying a commodity belonging to a wealthy man. Her body, distinguished from the body it is temporarily housing, is of little worth. As such, she can be dragged around the country with little attention to her needs. It is interesting that movie reviews note this as the most problematic aspect of this film "the whole aspect of the surrogate mother and dragging a pregnant woman through an action film" (http://www.rottentomatoes.com). This critique presents the idea that women's access to particular kinds of spaces should be restricted, while the film reinforces notions of the home as a more appropriate space for some, more valuable, mothers.

<38> Medical technology has shifted our representations of the woman's body with regard to her role in childbirth but what of the mother's body once the baby is born? Here again the ideologies of technology and capitalism play out in the concrete abstractions that have come to dominate, while Katz-Rothman's discussion of how the ideologies of technology and capitalism are intertwined, is also highlighted (2000: 40).

<39> While the woman's womb is seen as rented space during pregnancy, throughout history, representations of the breast have been used to both bolster and condemn the ideology of capitalism in relation to motherhood. Under capitalism, the social relation between those who own the means of production and those who possess labor power has been exploited. Associated with this exploitative relationship is the division of the classes and domination of the laboring class by the bourgeoisie. In her book At the Breast (1999), Blum notes that throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries "high-born women...looked for 'wholesome' farm wives or 'ruddy-cottager(s)' with whom to place their babies" (1999: 20). At the same time, breastfeeding by bourgeois women was discouraged due to "proscriptions against sexual relations during lactation [which] interfered with husbands' conjugal rights; [while] the contraceptive effect of lactation interfered with pressures to produce male heirs" (1999: 21). Thus the use of wet nurses to breastfeed was a mechanism through which the woman's breast became a commodity, as well as being a means of reinforcing class divisions. Intertwined in this process certain women were discouraged from breastfeeding, and with this, the status of certain women was effectively perpetuated as the property of men under patriarchy.

<40> Blum also presents conversations with modern day mothers who are members of La Leche League, an organization that rejects the ideologies of capitalism and technology. According to their view, medicine and the imposition of hospital births have degraded women's bodies. In addition, the relationship between mother and child has been compromised by the intrusion of technologies and commodities such as sterilized bottles and breast pumps. As an alternative La Leche League advances a philosophy of embodied motherhood which "emphasizes the need of the child for the mother's presence and the need of both the mother and baby for an intimate, physical relationship -- needs that are best and 'naturally' fulfilled through breastfeeding" (1999: 65). Blum's interviews with members of the League reveal their apparent rejection of capitalism while also revealing their entrapment in patriarchal ideology. These women use the term "Bad Yuppie Mothers" to describe mothers who "embrace their careers, work long hours, use extensive daycare, and, worst of all, do not breastfeed" (87). One woman who lived next to some expensive homes noted:

I would never like to see a mom who lives...in these new [expensive] homes and goes to work every day just to pay for the house...I wouldn't choose to live there if I couldn't afford it on my husband's salary! (1999: 87)

On the surface these representations are a rejection of materialism, but as Blum notes:

Bad Yuppie Mother stories...should be read more subtly as a complex tale of middle class anxieties and tensions, and of the tug of war between the maternal body-as-body and as symbolic class-enhancing resource. (1999: 90)

<41> In these dialogues and representations of the mother's body and at an even smaller scale the mother's breast concrete abstractions that shape our beliefs about good and bad mothers are produced. In the case of La Leche League, the representations of motherhood, their association with capitalism and consequent spaces of mothering, serve to illustrate the complex and often contradictory interrelations between ideology and representation.

<42> Another way in which the ideology of capitalism is materialized in specific spatial realities is in the work of mothering. Blum points out that by the early twentieth century, when poor mothers worked outside the home in factories to support their families, women's work as paid laborers and laboring work as mothers was devalued. Blum observes that working women were portrayed as negligent mothers, while their work as mothers was considered "sacred only without the dollars" (1999: 24). In effect, these representations not only serve to devalue women's bodies but also to relegate them to the private space of the home. At the same time mothering of this sort is reserved for a relatively small number of elite, middle and upper middle class women. Thus, the class division associated with capitalist ideology is manifested in the work of mothers and the spaces of mothering.

<43> This simultaneous commodification and devaluing of what Lefebvre terms spatial practice -- the lived experience of mothering -- is also evident in today's mothering and child-care practices. Segura, referring to 1990 census data, notes that over half of all women with children work for wages (1994: 211). So what was once "women's unpaid domestic work" has been moved into the labor market, so that:

The woman who would have spent the day frying chicken and doing laundry a generation ago now works to earn money to purchase fried chicken and laundry services - from other women who fry chicken, fold laundry and work cash registers. (Katz-Rothman 2000: 137)

Contrary to the promise of equality that movement into the labor force held for women, this shift has served to devalue the role of mothers in capitalist society. The concrete reality of this is evident by examining who performs paid domestic and mothering work. Although mothering is seen as a commodity, it is presented as an inexpensive, hence devalued, commodity. In addition, the fact that much of this "motherwork" is conducted by women of lower socio-economic status than the mother who hires a nanny, au pair or babysitter, serves to reinforce class divisions, hence reifying capitalist ideology in the daily practice of mothering.

<44> Another movie about motherhood, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, directed by Curtis Hanson, uses an intricate twisting of representations and concrete abstractions that nevertheless illustrate how perceptions of race, class, and intelligence are bound up with the social spaces of motherhood. This movie revolves around the attempt by an atypical, white, blue-eyed, blonde haired nanny, to take control of a family's repositories of wealth (their children) by getting rid of her employers, the biological parents of these children. As the plot unfolds, the nanny's motives are attributed to the psychological trauma she experienced with the loss of commodities such as her husband, wealth, a child through miscarriage, and that which gives her own body exchange value -- her uterus -- as a consequence of a needed hysterectomy. Thus, this film represents women without prospects for ownership under a patriarchal system, as hysterical and dangerous vessels. The other caregiver employed by this family is a socially inept, learning-disabled black man, who is employed to take care of the middle class homeowners' yard.

<45> The irony of this movie lies in the final twist wherein the handyman -- Soloman, despite being dismissed from service by the family, heroically risks his life to save the family from the nanny’s destructive plan. Soloman ensures the survival and continued prosperity of his white, bourgeois employers. Hence this film illustrates how, despite intentions to blur the typical representations of domestic employees, the ideology of capitalism through divisions of class and race, reigns in the bodies of the employees and in the space of the home. Concrete abstractions regarding productive and unproductive identities are reified and spaces, along with the bodies that occupy those spaces, are imbued with ideologies of capitalism and patriarchy.

Conclusion

<46> Up to this point we have been concerned primarily with two of our aims; first, a reflection on the colonization of spaces of motherhood and second, an examination of the ways in which spaces of motherhood are constructed in accordance with these concrete abstractions. Our discussion has cut into a variety of scenes from television and film as well as a number of different scales in order to illustrate how motherhood is imbued with three imbricated ideologies - patriarchy, technology, and capitalism. In this process motherhood is constructed as fixed and permanent, or to use Lefebvre's term, as a "dominated space." To conclude we want to briefly consider the third aim of this project. As previously noted Lefebvre argues that concrete abstractions are indicative of a splintering in the arrangement of the three "moments" of the production of space; where lived experience generated conceptions and representations of space, now representations dominate perceptions and practice, effectively eliminating the possibility for agency or transformation. Following this, our goal is neither definitive nor prescriptive, to do so would be to invoke a representation a priori and thereby re-instate a misalignment of social space. Instead, we want to think about some of the ways that women have, and do, produce motherhood as a tranformative space, despite the representations of space that the ideologies of patriarchy, technology, and capitalism produce.

<47> Thus, while understanding the oppression of patriarchal ideology, it should be noted that many women have discovered the power that lies in their bodies as the space where men's seeds develop. Tong notes that "radical-cultural feminists are convinced that the ultimate source of women's power rests in their power to gestate new life" (1998: 71). In Recreating Motherhood, Katz-Rothman defines motherhood as "an experience of the body and of the mind: women have come to feel 'in touch with their bodies,' maybe for the first time since childhood, in pregnancy" (2000: 55). In this sense the representations of motherhood potentially extend far beyond patriarchal ideology.

<48> The same can be said of technology. As the ideology of technology has become materialized in objects, machines and tools that colonize and mechanize the woman's body and the house, the same ideology also opens a space for the existence of new subjects and desires, thence, for new representations and practices of motherhood. Furthermore, some women use technology as a way of normalizing their bodies and their lives, and in so doing claim the realization of their desire to be biological mothers. As Sawicki notes, "at the same time that new technologies create new subjects -- that is, fit mothers, unfit mothers, infertile women, and so forth -- they also create the possibility of new sites of resistance" (1999: 194).

<49> As for the ideology of capitalism, its power lies in the value of resources exchanged and the consumption of commodities. Sperm, eggs, mother's bodies, breasts, caregivers, and so on are ascribed as resources with a particular value under this ideology. From our perspective, just as women's access to public space was altered by their role as consumers, their role as mother's can also be transformed through consumption. The issue in the production of alternative spaces of motherhood is which resources are valued and who gets to consume. Thus, capitalist ideology can function in favor of women's identity as mothers and for the benefit of motherhood by adopting what Blum has described as the two most pressing needs for motherhood in the twenty-first century:

There is a pressing need to value caregiving with public resources, to treat it as a basis for social entitlement...and more complicated [but less widely discussed] is the need to value mothers’ embodied well-being. (1999: 181)

<50> In conclusion, we have cast a critical eye upon the representations and ideologies that pervade the spaces occupied by mothers. In this we have been influenced by Soja, who notes that the "intentional disordering and disruption of the...philosophies that have evolved to the present is a necessary first step en route to understanding Thirdspace" (1996: 163). While we are compelled to decolonize the representations and ideologies that have come to dominate motherhood the project does not end with this critique. Ultimately the goal is not solely to contemplate motherhood merely as reproduction, but rather, to actively materialize motherhood as a production of space. In the process of reconnecting the "moments" (spatial representations, representations of space and representational space) that produce space we can create motherhood as a space of possibility. As Soja puts it:

Combining the real and the imagined, things and thought on equal terms, or at least not privileging one over the other a priori, these lived spaces of representation [representational spaces] are the terrain for the generation of "counterspaces," spaces of resistance to the dominant order. (1996: 68)

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