Julie Kelso

Marie Porter

Maternal research is a rapidly expanding, multi-disciplinary form of scholarship. Prior to second wave feminism most motherhood literature was written from a male perspective. This literature focused on telling mothers how to practice mothering without acknowledging the expertise of the mothers themselves. Research on motherhood as it is experienced in all its facets by mothers has only emerged in recent decades. This book is aimed at expanding academic knowledge of motherhood, from a feminist perspective, looking particularly at how maternal subjectivities can be represented and theorised. When mothers themselves (academic or not) are responsible for theorisation and representation of maternal â ~realitiesâ (TM), dominant theories and representations of motherhood are radically challenged. In Theorising and Representing Maternal Realities the contributors argue that it is no longer acceptable to regard mothers as mere objects of knowledge and research. They are primarily the subjects of knowledge and research.

Theorising and Representing Maternal Realities

According to Kelso, the Book of Chronicles silences women in specific ways, most radically through their association with maternity. Drawing on the work of two feminist philosophers, Luce Irigaray and Michelle Boulous Walker, she argues that we may discern two principal strategies of silencing women in Chronicles: disavowal and repression of the maternal body. In its simplest form, the silencing of women takes place through both an explicit and implicit strategy of excluding them from the central action. Largely banished from the central action, they are hardly able to contribute to the production of Israel s past. On a more complex level, however, women are most effectively silenced through their association with maternity, because the maternal body is both disavowed and repressed in Chronicles. The association of women with maternity, along with the disavowal and repression of the maternal body as origin of the masculine subject, effects and guarantees the silence of the feminine, enabling man to imagine himself as sole producer of his world. These strategies of silencing the feminine need to be understood in relation to the relative absence of women from the narrative world of Chronicles. Kelso argues that Chronicles depends on the absence and silence of women for its imaginary coherence. This argument is enabled by Irigarayan theory. But more importantly, Kelso suggests that Irigaray also offers us a viable mode (not method) of reading, writing, listening, and speaking as woman (whatever that might mean), in relation to the so-called origins of western culture, specifically the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. She argues that Irigaray enables a not only rigorous, feminist critique of patriarchy and its many texts, but also, somewhat more charitably, a mode of reading that enables women to read the past differently, seeking out what remains to be discovered, especially the forgotten future in the past.

An Irigarayan Reading of the Book of Chronicles

O Mother, Where Art Thou?

Every day, human beings tell and are told stories, sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes not. Most of our communication with each other, direct or indirect, involves narrative production and reception. Narrative is constitutive of human being. However, whose narratives are heard? Feminists argue that the relations between language, knowledge, gender and power, particularly the question as to whether man-made and controlled language is a material fit to receive and convey woman’s stories, are critical issues, because historically, patriarchy has worked to silence women’s dialogue. Male knowledge, unsurprisingly, created and continues to create unrepresentative maternal narratives which lead to unreal expectations of mothers and motherwork. It is, therefore, disconcertingly significant for mothers that neither mothers nor their motherwork have been considered worthy of historical record; nor are historical records usually written from a mother’s perspective. Hence, the narrative research in this book, which gives recognition to motherhood, mothers and/or the work they do, is valuable. It adds to the rapidly accumulating maternal research—research that is now available for the historical record. Mothers are speaking up, developing a canon of literature/research narrated in maternal language and claiming maternal knowledge and power.

Narratives and Counter-Narratives

Mother-Texts

Maternal research is a rapidly expanding, multi-disciplinary form of scholarship. Prior to second wave feminism most motherhood literature was written from a male perspective. This literature focused on telling mothers how to practice mothering without acknowledging the expertise of the mothers themselves. Research on motherhood as it is experienced in all its facets by mothers has only emerged in recent decades. This book is aimed at expanding academic knowledge of motherhood, from a feminist perspective, looking particularly at how maternal subjectivities can be represented and theorised. When mothers themselves (academic or not) are responsible for theorisation and representation of maternal ‘realities’, dominant theories and representations of motherhood are radically challenged. In Theorising and Representing Maternal Realities the contributors argue that it is no longer acceptable to regard mothers as mere objects of knowledge and research. They are primarily the subjects of knowledge and research.

Roland Boer

Michael Carden

The essays in this volume focus on various dimensions of what it means to read the Bible, which was the abiding concern of Conrad's work.

Julie Kelso

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