ABSTRACT
A characteristic feature of ideological formations is that they can be hegemonic. This means that at the level of individual consciousness they are understood as "common sense" or as a description of "the way things are"; ideological formations are not perceived as determinants of consciousness with specific relationships to and specific effects on material conditions, social relations, and social contexts. In order to be hegemonic, ideological formations must mask or obscure both the contradictions that can be implicit in these formations themselves and the contradictions that can exist between ideological formations and their corresponding material conditions and social relations, structures, institutions, and practices. To the extent that ideological formations prevent such contradictions from becoming evident and becoming a concern to a significant number of people, the vision of "the way things are" that these formations embody tends to be widely accepted and infrequently questioned.1 In my analysis of accounts of mothering that have been developed in or influenced by modern U.S. feminism, I argue that individualism and essential motherhood have tended to be hegemonic. At the same time, however, because ideological formations are discursive phenomena, they are also characterized by the fundamental undecidability that is an element of language itself. All signification is an exclusion that points indirectly to what it excludes, and there are inevitably gaps or slippages between signifiers and what they signify. For these reasons, a complex interplay of identity and difference is characteristic of discursivity. The operation and effects of undecidability in language can themselves be recognized and theorized, and deconstructive reading practices can focus on the exclusions, slippages, and contradictions implicit in a discursive formation so as to produce alternative readings of such formations (Dernda 1974, 1978, 1981, 1982). Within ideological formations there is a similar interplay of identity and difference, and the operations and effects of this interplay can also be recognized and theorized. Thus, ideological formations can also be subject to deconstructive reading practices that enable their analysis, critique, and rearticulation. I believe that bringing such reading practices to bear on essential motherhood, as well as on feminist accounts of mothering, can be an important contribution to dislodging essential motherhood.
