Stabat Mater

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Duke University Press and Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Poetics Today.If, in speaking of a woman, it is impossible to say what she isfor to do so would risk abolishing her differencemight matters not stand differently with respect to the mother, motherhood being the sole function of the "other sex" to which we may confidently attribute existence? Yet here, too, we are caught in a paradox. To begin with, we live in a civilization in which the consecrated (religious or secular) representation of femininity is subsumed under maternity. Under close examination, however, this maternity turns out to be an adult (male and female) fantasy of a lost continent: what is involved, moreover, is not so much an idealized primitive mother as an idealization of theunlocalizablerelationship between her and us, an idealization of primary narcissism. When feminists call for a new representation of femininity, they seem to identify maternity with this idealized misapprehension; and feminism, because it rejects this image and its abuses, sidesteps the real experience that this fantasy obscures. As a result, maternity is repudiated or denied by some avant-garde feminists, while its traditional representations are wittingly or unwittingly accepted by the "broad mass" of women and men. FLASHan instant of timeChristianity is no doubt the or a tineless dream; atoms most sophisticated symbolic conswollen beyond measure, atoms struct in which femininity, to of -a bond, a vision, a shiver, a the extent that it figures therein still shapeless embryo, unname-and it does so constantlyis able. Epiphanies. Photos of what confined within the limits of * This essay first appeared, under the title "Herethique de l'amour," in Tel Quel, no. 74

From the Site of the Empty Tomb: Approaching the Hidden Grief of Prenatal Loss

“…Kristeva critiques the tendency of feminism to "identify motherhood with [an] idealized misconception" and, through its rejection of the real experience of motherhood, ultimately-and ironically-reinforce this misconception. 12 A mother, Kristeva writes, is a "crucified being"; 13 she is "always branded by pain. " 14 While some have critiqued Kristeva's early treatment of maternal suffering, her em-NTR volume 28 number 2, March 2016 50 phasis on relational subjectivity, focus on the maternal body, and attempt to take seriously the love and suffering bound up in maternity represent a critical contribution to feminist discourse on motherhood and embodiment.…”

Crítica literaria y discurso social: feminidad y escritura de mujeres

“…Siendo esto lo general, no es posible obviar que esa homogeneidad tendió a quebrarse en y a través de dos polos. Por un lado, desde las textualidades de las escritoras que, mediante estrategias y juegos enmascaradores, activaron lo que Julia Kristeva (1987) señala como una particularidad del lenguaje artístico: la posibilidad de hacer manifiestos los deseos reprimidos respecto de una experiencia que no tiene 61 ÍCONOS 28, 2007, pp. 59-70 Crítica literaria y discurso social: feminidad y escritura de mujeres lenguaje.…”

(M)Othering: Feminist Motherhood, Neoliberal Discourses and the Other’

“…In that sense, women are then associated with nature and men with culture (Ortner 1972). In such contexts, representations of femininity are reduced and circumscribed by motherhood (Kristeva 1977). This nature/culture divide not only marginalises women to 'natural' functions related to motherhood but also mislays the claim that sex and gender can be easily separated from one another (Söderbäck 2010).…”

“…In the midst of these contradictory signs, women are (and keeping in mind that there are different levels of 'machismo' across this very large, diverse and unequal country) effectively seen as the second sex (de Beauvoir 1972). As a result, womanhood is only achieved when and if mediated by motherhood (Kristeva 1977). In sum, women are not women until they become mothers.…”

“…In sum, women are not women until they become mothers. Therefore, perceived notions of women as the bearers of the fruit of future generation echo at all levels, social, cultural, economic and political (Kristeva 1977). In the political arena, policies defining and dealing with motherhood are deeply embedded with sexist values (Galli 2002).…”