Narrative identity: Voices of motherhood: feminism, motherhood and narrative identity Motherhood
Journal Title: Miscellanea Anthropologica et Sociologica - Year 2016, Vol 17, Issue 2
Abstract
Motherhood is one of the most crucial aspects of female identity. It is more or less anubiquitous issue in any discussion focusing on women or feminism, and translates intoall every conceivable area of women’s lives whether physiological (the body is being transformed),practical or philosophical. In this essay, I am going to concentrate upon the relationswhich exist between motherhood, narration and identity within the context ofphilosophy and feminism, while focusing on specific issues such as the body, autonomyand patriarchy. I will refer to various classical thinkers and their writings on motherhood,such as Simone de Beauvoir or Adrienne Rich.I have used the framework set out by Rich who clearly highlights the distinctions betweenmotherhood as an institution and experience, and my focus was on the way “themasks of motherhood are cracking through” and women’s narratives organized aroundmotherhood proliferate. It seems that the need to express and share their experience ina narrative form (literary, personal, essayistic) is appropriated as a means that will helpsolve the social and structural issues at the level of biography. Autobiographical narrationalso becomes a form of projecting one’s life and work through the kinds of changes womenface when becoming a mother, such as self-enhancing knowledge, and through the constructionof a new identity. I identified three areas of women’s narrative activities whichcontribute to the creation of “a collective description of the world which will be trulyours” as proclaimed by Adrienne Rich. The first area includes numerous literary narrationsby professional writers and thinkers. The second is composed from the blogosphereand popular narrations. The third includes the growing body of scholarship, philosophieswritten “in different voices”, extensive research projects, collections of essays, however,this area has not been discussed in my essay, since its focus was on personal, literary andpopular narratives.
Authors and Affiliations
Monika Bokiniec
Keywords
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