The Mother-Infant Relation as an Ontology of Inclination

An Evaluation of Adriana Cavarero’s Framework

Abstract

In critically dismantling the traditional, vertical framework of humanity throughout the pages of her work, Inclinations: A Critique of Rectitude, Adriana Cavarero opens a major space in the ontological discourse to follow with the necessary question: from what alternative foundation will we now assess and understand the human condition? Her subsequent answer is a proposal in favour of the mother-infant relation, on account of its unparalleled clarity in displaying inclination as the true framework of humanity. Cavarero’s arguments in Inclinations are extremely compelling in exposing the fundamental flaws of verticality and rationality as a basis for the human condition— but this does not automatically equate to her framework of the mother-infant relation as a “better” replacement. My aim in writing this paper is to analyse Cavarero’s explanations and arguments of this ontology in order to see how it stands against those of her predecessors. Then, by bringing attention to the inconsistencies in Cavarero’s interpretations of Arendt’s ideologies, the problematic abstraction of motherhood as a concept, and the potential limitations that specifying a single relationship to define a collective might have, I argue that Cavarero’s ontology contains multiple faults that need to be reworked in order for it to become a strong and unproblematic framework.