The Hygienic Divide: Stan Goff on Conceiving Parenthood

Conceiving Parenthood is a picture book.  And many of the pictures are of women and/or children.  How, then, could it be a work of “Ethics”?  Why bother with Lysol ads when we can read yet more Agamben (or Augustine or Aquinas)?  I am not so much bitter as amused by these reactions, because they have to do with the same fear that leads to Lysol douche in the first place — fear of bodies, fear of women, fear of forms of “ethics” that are indeed political, but political in messy ways.

So, I am quite cheered up today by this little gift.

I happen to be re-reading this book right now , and I hope eventually to review it on this blog.  I showed this film during my last iteration of Intro Ethics, and I pray that people who watched it then will keep digging, and hoping, and finding the joy sufficient to resist the tangle of hate Goff describes in his book and depicts in his film.
Thank you, Feral Scholar.  Bless you for being wild.