ABSTRACT
Motherhood remains a complex and contested issue in feminist research as well as public discussion. This interdisciplinary volume explores cultural representations of motherhood in various contemporary European contexts, including France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, and it considers how such representations affect the ways in which different individuals and groups negotiate motherhood as both institution and lived experience. It has a particular focus on literature, but it also includes essays that examine representations of motherhood in philosophy, art, social policy, and film. The book’s driving contention is that, through intersecting with other fields and disciplines, literature and the study of literature have an important role to play in nuancing dialogues around motherhood, by offering challenging insights and imaginative responses to complex problems and experiences. This is demonstrated throughout the volume, which covers a range of topics including: discursive and visual depictions of pregnancy and birth; the impact of new reproductive technologies on changing family configurations; the relationship between mothering and citizenship; the shaping of policy imperatives regarding mothering and disability; and the difficult realities of miscarriage, child death, violence, and infanticide. The collection expands and complicates hegemonic notions of motherhood, as the authors map and analyse shifting conceptions of maternal subjectivity and embodiment, explore some of the constraining and/or enabling contexts in which mothering takes place, and ask searching questions about what it means to be a ‘mother’ in Europe today. It will be of interest not only to those working in gender, women’s and feminist studies, but also to scholars in literary and cultural studies, and those researching in sociology, criminology, politics, psychology, medical ethics, midwifery, and related fields.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|68 pages
Pregnancy and Birth
chapter 1|18 pages
Birth Fear and the Subjugation of Women’s Strength
chapter 3|12 pages
An (Un)familiar Story
chapter 5|13 pages
Natality, Materiality, Maternity
part II|68 pages
Generation and Relation
chapter 6|15 pages
Erasing Mother, Seeking Father
chapter 9|13 pages
Ties That Bind in Tanja Dückers’s Novel Himmelskörper
chapter 10|14 pages
Matrixial Creativity and the Wit(h)nessing of Trauma
part III|87 pages
Experience and Affect
chapter 11|18 pages
Publicizing Vulnerability
chapter 13|13 pages
Nuria C. Botey’s Short Story ‘Viviendo con el tío Roy’
chapter 14|13 pages
Broken Nights, Shattered Selves
chapter 16|15 pages
‘How to Say Hello to the Sea’
part IV|30 pages
Reflections