1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910746071203321

Autore

Williamson Rachel

Titolo

21st-Century Narratives of Maternal Ambivalence / / by Rachel Williamson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2023

ISBN

9783031393518

3031393511

Edizione

[1st ed. 2023.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (242 pages)

Collana

Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, , 2662-9372

Disciplina

306.8743

Soggetti

Sex

Popular culture

Gender identity in mass media

Gender Studies

Popular Culture

Media and Gender

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction: ‘An Exquisite Suffering’ -- 2. Contextualizing Ambivalence: Intensive Mothering Under Neoliberalism -- 3. 'It Takes a Village': Resisting the Repudiation of the 'Bad' Mother -- 4. Embodying Ambivalence: Abjection and the Problematic Maternal Body -- 5. The Body in Extremis: Vocalizing Maternal Corporeality -- 6. Surviving Motherhood: From Maternal Ambivalence to Maternal Resilience -- 7. “Strange and Wild”: Towards an Aesthetics of Ambivalence.

Sommario/riassunto

Motherhood has long been depicted in reductive or limited terms. At once valorized and configured as the ultimate end-goal for socially condoned femininity, maternity is also highly mediated and scrutinized. This has resulted in a representational tradition that persists in imagining maternal subjects in rigid binary terms, pitting good mothers against bad. Largely in response to this repressive schema, recent years have marked the emergence of a diverse range of visual and literary texts about motherhood. While such texts vary in style, genre and form, this book argues that they are unified in their efforts to publicize



embodied maternal experience and foreground maternal ambivalence, a concept that is best understood as a mother’s capacity to simultaneously love and hate her child. Although maternal ambivalence has become an increasingly popular topic of study with maternal scholars, its articulation within contemporary representations and narratives has yet to be adequately theorized and addressed, and this book aims to fill this gap. Rachel Williamson is a policy advisor and senior trainer at domestic violence specialist organization SHINE (Safer Homes in New Zealand Everyday), working with employers and government departments to recognize and respond appropriately to staff experiencing domestic violence. She obtained her PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her articles have appeared in Continuum, Labour and Industry and In Media Res, and she has two chapters in the edited collections Maternal Connections: When Daughter Becomes Mother and Maternal Regret: Resistances, Renunciations, and Reflections.