QUEERING FOETAL LIFE: BETWEEN BUTLER
AND BERLANT
Fiona Jenkins1
1.0 THE UNBURIED AND UNBURIABLE
In the 2007 Romanian film, 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days,2 the depiction of an illegal abortion under the
communist regime makes as vivid as possible a case for the need for women to have access to
safe and legal abortions. The desperation, the danger and the abuse that women are exposed to
under this order seems an index of the incivility of social relations more broadly, in a world of
everyday humiliations and an intense regulation of lives. As the first installment of a proposed
trilogy by the director Cristian Mungiu– titled ‘Tales from a Golden Age’ — it seems to ironically
point at the erasure of social memory that allows past times to take on the sentimental hues of the
idyll when compared to the troubles of the present. Yet the film does not obviously espouse a
straightforwardly progressive moral either, lingering instead on abortion as trauma and as a place
of silence or unspeakability that finds many sites of resonance.
The concluding line of the film — ‘lets never talk about this’ — makes sense in at least two
contexts. The first is the utter secrecy with which the illegal abortion has had to be conducted.
Otilia, the resourceful young woman who speaks these words, has helped her shy friend Gabriela
obtain the abortion, even to the point of submitting to the abortionist’s demand for sex with both
of them in part payment; and she is as much at risk as the others of being imprisoned for years
for complicity in the act. The second context of their utterance, however, reflects the trauma not
only of what she has undergone but what she has done and witnessed. ‘Lets never talk about this’
is a direct response to Gabriela’s demand, uttered so softly it does not quite seem to expect an
answer, ‘You did bury it -?’. For Otilia has also taken on the job of disposing of the foetus which,
the abortionist has warned them, will block a toilet, and therefore must be taken — as he
instructs in detail — to the top of a ten storey apartment and pushed down the rubbish chute. We
1 Senior Lecturer and Head of Discipline, Philosophy, School of Humanities, Australian National University, Canberra,
Australia. My current research is on the theme of ungrievable lives in Judith Butler’s work. This article was finished with the
help of an internal research fellowship from the ANU’s Research School of Humanities whose support is gratefully
acknowledged. Thanks are also due to several individuals whose thoughtful questions addressed to an earlier draft persuaded
me to extend and develop my ideas, including Andrew Benjamin, Havi Carel, Moira Gatens, and Helen Keane. I am
particularly grateful to Judith Grbich for her patience and encouragement in producing the final draft and to two anonymous
referees for their insightful suggestions and criticisms. Fiona.Jenkins@anu.edu.au
2 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romanian: 4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile) written and directed by Cristian Mungiu. It won the Palme
d'Or and the FIPRESCI Award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
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have seen the well-formed foetus, looking much like a very tiny newborn, lying bloodied on the
bathroom floor. Gabriela’s plea to Otilia to bury these remains at first seems assented to by
Otilia. But as she runs through the city’s menacing streets, carrying the incriminating evidence
wrapped in a plastic bag, she is forced instead to follow the instructions she has been given. Her
desire to draw silence ove