The Maternal Assemblage: Nonprocreative Maternity as Contagion and ResistanceShow full item record
Title | The Maternal Assemblage: Nonprocreative Maternity as Contagion and Resistance |
---|---|
Author | Hicks, Charles E. |
Date | 2018 |
Abstract | This article analyzes the consistent problematic of nonprocreative maternal identity, specifically its positioning in a heteronormative symbolic framework as the antithesis of biological or "real" motherhood. Using Lee Edelman's work on the queer body's relationship to a futural horizon, the first part addresses how the epistemological framework whereby nonprocreative maternal bodies are subjected to the image of the Child, a fantasy of wholeness, thematizes the nonprocreative maternal body as deviant and enacts a logic of repetition that supplements a heteronormative future. The second portion of this essay illustrates how, due to the monomaternalist matrix's refusal to accept it as legitimate, the nonprocreative mother is effectively cast outside the symbolic network of heteronormativity, thereby affording it a heightened level of interconnectivity with other "deviant" bodies.1 This, as the article demonstrates, results in the formation of a maternal assemblage, a collection of disparate bodies connected by contagion, rather than in the reproduction of a heteronormative future. In the concluding section, this essay argues that the nonstratified maternal assemblage produces a queer child, an offspring that does not reorient and supplement the heteronormative structure but instead challenges it by infecting the futural horizon the child inhabits with alterity and difference. |
Link | https://doi.org/10.23860/jfs.2018.14.02
https://repository.tcu.edu/handle/116099117/26444 https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/jfs/vol14/iss14/2/ https://repository.tcu.edu/handle/116099117/26444 |
Department | English |
Subject | motherhood
adoptive maternity Deleuze (Gilles) Edelman (Lee) queer studies monomaternalism heteronormativity |
Files in this item
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Research Publications [481]
Related items
Showing a few items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Is maternal deprivation the root of all evil?
Cross, David R.; Purvis, Karyn B. (2017-07-06)In this paper we seriously entertain the question, Is maternal deprivation the root of all evil? Our consideration of this question is broken down into three parts. In the first part, we discuss the nature of evil, focusing ... -
Effects of maternal separation on Alzheimer's Disease-related pathology in adult C57BL/6J mice
Peterman, Julia Lauren (2020)Alzheimer¿s Disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia, with an incidence expected to drastically increase as our population grows older. AD is characterized by the accumulation of amyloid-beta (AB) plaques and ... -
The effects of maternal deprivation on problem behavior in post-institutionalized children
Pennings, Jacquelyn Sue (2005)
© TCU Library 2015 | Contact Special Collections |
HTML Sitemap