123423 SE Literary & Cultural Studies Seminar / BA Paper / MA British/Irish/New English (2020W)

In this webinar we will discuss a number of 'mom-oires' (not momoirs), that is texts (both fictional and autobiographical) that have as their primary concern the representation and memorialization of the mother figure.

The aim is to guide students in a critical engagement with the phenomenon of motherhood (intended as institution, experience as well as discursive formation). In our Western, mostly secular but still Christian world, the figure of the mother has been the object of multiple investments (discursive, symbolical, mythological, religious, economic, political), idealizations (mater dolorosa, Madonna, the 'angel in the house' ), abstractions, stereotypes (the cruel stepmother, Medusa etc...) and displacements (of the sacred). Most of these religious, ideological investments have very little to do with the real life experiences of women both across time and space but also across class and race. In a time of racial, feminist and religious backlashes, we find particularly urgent to re-examine representations of mothers in a number of older and more recent texts drawn from Anglo-American but also postcolonial contexts. Particular emphasis will be put on questions of representation, aesthetics and subjectivity. We will also read and discuss some key-theoretical texts on motherhood (Winnicott, Recalcati, Rose, Chodorow, Rich).