ABSTRACT

What are the current meanings of “home,” “family,” and “mothering”? The shifting space of the “home” in the North American imagination is emblematic of larger neoliberal societal narratives in which we are witnessing increasing financialization of the “social.” How are neoliberal discourses governing morality and subjectivity implicitly informing and altering conceptualizations of the “home” and associated presumptions of domesticity? Have neoliberal imperatives reduced the “home” to being a “house” – another site of investment devoid of symbolic significance? Or, alternately, could this perceived transition from “home” to “house” be viewed in terms of increased moral/social imperatives to follow even more homogenized roles masked by the fiction of diversified chaos?