What Exactly Is the Transformation of Motherhood? Commentary on Lisa Baraitser's Paper/Reply to Commentaries

[...]through her vivid metaphor of veil and wig, she has given us a suitably complex way to think about the simultaneously binding and freeing aspects of mothering and about psychological change itself. If a woman is willing to do "what a man does" in the workforce, she largely escapes dis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in gender and sexuality 2006-07, Vol.7 (3), p.239
Main Authors: de Marneffe, Daphne, Baraitser, Lisa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Desire
Dialectics
Femininity
Feminism
Lacan, Jacques Marie Emile (1901-1981)
Mothers
Psychoanalysis
Subjectivity
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Summary:[...]through her vivid metaphor of veil and wig, she has given us a suitably complex way to think about the simultaneously binding and freeing aspects of mothering and about psychological change itself. If a woman is willing to do "what a man does" in the workforce, she largely escapes discrimination. [...]in a very real way, one can maintain one's "unity," one's solid (masculine or feminine) self, as long as one doesn't disrupt one's economic or psychological condition by becoming a mother. [...]although Lacan appears to give us one of the most comprehensive accounts of the aetiology of love and desire, there is an entanglement between the two that can be seen in his work. Again the child's alterity is negated and with it the specificity of maternal love for a child. Because desire is always chasing something unrecoverable that the other stands in for, both the child and maternal love in its specificity slip out of sight.
ISSN:1524-0657
1940-9206