The Mother

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Each of these four papers looks at the role of the mother in political theory. Lawrie Balfour reads the “impossible mother” at the center of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye to explore the freedom of black women and girls and the responsibilities of the writers who tell their stories. Lori Marso argues that the loving attention of Chantal Akerman’s and Jennie Livingston’s cameras trained on mothers in their documentary films decenters the idealized male gaze to work through the cruelties of patriarchal kinship. Annie Menzel puts Sylvia Wynter and Silvia Federici into conversation on the “demonic mother” to compare the different ways she serves both as a pivotal figure in the transition to racial capitalist modernity. Jasmine Syedullah asks what authority the maternal body can have in the unfinished work of abolition by looking to the life and work of Harriet Jacobs with Angela Davis.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• Impossible Motherhood, Female Freedom, and the Politics of Writing - Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia

• Dear Mothers - Lori Marso, Union College

• The Demonic Maternal in Sylvia Wynter and Silvia Federici - Annie Menzel, University of Wisconsin

• The Unfinished Work of Mourning - Jasmine Syedullah, Vassar College

Chair

• Lori Marso Union College

Discussant

• George M. Shulman New York University