Subverting “Divine” Bengali Motherhood in Rituparno Ghosh’s Film Titli (2002)

Rituparno Ghosh is one of the most prolific filmmakers from Bengal, whose narrative depiction gained global critical acclaim in a short career span (1992-2003). Ghosh’s work focuses on human interaction and relationships through the women characters and their identity formation in Bengali society. His 2002 film Titli offers a nuanced exploration of the multifaceted experiences of a mother-daughter relationship, subverting the social representation of motherhood in Bengal. This paper investigates the various dimensions of motherhood, womanhood, and identity formation depicted in the film and interprets how Ghosh’s narrative sheds light on the social, emotional, and cultural aspects of this complex role—a role where mothers are not limited to caregivers and caretakers of domestic life without any identity of their own other than that of a mother, a wife, or a daughter. By analyzing the cultural symbols, dialogue, and visual motifs employed in the film, the paper explores how motherhood is constructed and perceived within the film’s cultural milieu. Reading the film through motherhood and feminist scholarship helps understand the representation of the “sexual mother,” juxtaposing it with the image of an ideal “goddess mother” in Bengal, India, and challenging patriarchal norms imposed on women. It explores the themes of sacrifice, self-identity, and personal agency about motherhood. Examining the conflicts and dilemmas faced by Titli’s mother, Urmila, this paper unravels the complex interplay between the expectations imposed by society and individual desires and aspirations of women, both as mothers and within the dynamics of mother-daughter duos

Updating The Mother: Contemporary Intermedial Approaches to Brecht’s 1931 “Learning Play”

This article argues for the continuing relevance of Bertolt Brecht’s 1931 “learning play,” The Mother, through a comparative assessment of two of its recent productions by experimental performance collectives My Barbarian (in 2013) and The Wooster Group (in 2021-22). Through analyzing the productions’ respective intermedial performance strategies, this article explores how both collectives use Brecht’s century-old play to address contemporary social and political challenges while privileging motherhood as a powerful mode of resistance

Motherhood to Motherhoods: Ideologies of the “Feminine”

The eleven essays in this special issue originated from the “Motherhood to mother-hoods: Ideologies of the ‘Feminine’” conference held at Chapman University in Orange, California, on April 28-30, 2023. Against the background of intense discussions on women’s reproductive rights in the United States (US), the conference provided a fertile ground for reexamining motherhood as a concept extending beyond essentialist and biological determinations

The Outlawed Nipple: Breastless Parents and the Desire to Conform to Normative Motherhood

Maternal feminist theory and normative motherhood are influenced by a repronormativity that assumes all birthing people will breastfeed or chestfeed their infants. However, there is a predominant absence of a critical analysis of breast and chestfeeding from maternal theory and normative motherhood. Many new parents—for example, trans parents who have had chest masculinization surgery and parents who have had double mastectomies—do not have the privilege or ability to breast or chestfeed. For these breastless parents, the dilemma they face is intensified by normative motherhood discourses that essentialize good parenting as hetero-normative and repronormative, along with “breast is best” propaganda espousing erroneous health benefits. In this article, I argue that breastfeeding mandates are ubiquitous and misguided, in part due to an unspoken and assumed aspect of normative mothering, which has diluted the way health and perinatal care systems support breastless parents. This article centres repronormativity and transnormativity, ideologies entrenching the gender binary into its most rigid form, as intrinsic structures to normative motherhood. Understanding these concepts illustrates the harm inflicted on gender-nonconforming (or maternal nonconforming) identities embodying parenting. To combat this embodied shame and discrimination, I outline a conceptual framework for transnormative parenthood delineated by queer, intersectional, and ambivalent dictates

A Case for Motherhood as an Intersectional Identity: A Feminist’s Labour of Love

There are around 2.2 billion mothers (“Statistics”), and over 77 million live in the United States (US) (United States Census Bureau). Unfortunately, feminists have self-admittedly done a poor job representing the interests of mothers. Shari L. Thurer, for example, asserts that as soon as a woman becomes a mother, “her personal desires either evaporate or metamorphose so that they are identical with those of her infant” (191). In short, she “ceases to exist” (Thurer 191). Moreover, even though women’s unpaid domestic work in the US raises the gross domestic product by 25.7 per cent (McCann), economists often overlook the work of full-time mothers. This article situates mothers within feminist theory and discourse by demonstrating that mothers are not fully represented by feminists or economists and as such are marginalized by both identities. In short, motherhood is an experience that is not adequately addressed by the experiences of women or workers. An intersectional approach will help ensure mothers get the attention they deserve as a social identity in intersectional feminist scholarship. you want to keep the blood and the milk hidden as if the womb and breast never fed you (Kaur 223

Only Mom Can Save the World: Myths of Salvation and Destruction in Post-Apocalyptic Film

A version of this paper was originally given at the Motherhood to Motherhoods: Ideologies of the ‘Feminine’ conference at Chapman University in April 2023. It presents a comparative textual analysis of two recent films dealing with mothering in the post-apocalypse—A Quiet Place (2018) and Bird Box (2018)—to examine a new maternal myth taking shape, which I call “only mom can save the world.” This work is broken into four sections. The first section confronts the irrefutability of white, heteronormative family structure in these works. The second section examines maternal subjectivity on screen. The third section deals with maternal regret, and the fourth section questions “mother love” as representative of a ubiquitous and unfailing survival strategy. I argue that although these films ostensibly present very different formulations of motherhood, they both ultimately work to affirm or re-establish white, middle-class heteronormative motherhood as the most vital form of emotional and social connection in the face of a collapsing world. Current myths of motherhood tell us that when deployed correctly, “mother love” has the power to shape the future. Considering contemporary anxieties surrounding ecological and economic disasters in our world, the need to examine these problematic myths takes on new weight and immediacy

“I Don’t Want Dirty People Holding My Kids”: Analyzing White Mothers’ Perpetuation of Misogynoir in Born behind Bars (2017)

This article examines the A&E docuseries Born behind Bars (2017) to explore how misogynoir affects the construction of motherhood in the Leath Unit Prison Nursery Program, one of ten prison nurseries in the United States. These gender-responsive programs intervene in the epidemic of mother-child separation by allowing pregnant incarcerated mothers to live with their babies for a finite period. This article applies misogynoir as a framework to analyze white mothers’ efforts to regulate Donyell, the one Black mother on the unit, whom they label lazy, dirty, and a thief. Using a standard of whiteness and a discourse of maternal criminality, white mothers position themselves as the pinnacle of motherhood despite being incarcerated and, in turn, position Donyell as deviant. Grounding white mothers’ depictions of Donyell as unfit in stereotypical images pathologizing Black motherhood, this article argues that white mothers in Born behind Bars perpetuate misogynoir through language to replicate the systemic criminalization of Black motherhood and uphold patriarchal definitions of motherhood that exclude Black mothers

(In)Visible Boxes: Racialized Intersubjectivity and Transracial Mothering in Senna’s Caucasia

Danzy Senna explores the challenges of racialized intersubjectivity in transracial mothering in her 1998 novel Caucasia. Transracial mothering pertains to mothers who possess a different racial identity from that of their children, most often in mixed-race families. The literature on mixed-race identity and experience is notably limited, particularly concerning motherhood in mixed-race settings. This article addresses this gap and explores racialized intersubjectivity in mother-daughter relationships by analyzing motherhood in Danzy Senna’s novel Caucasia. Racialized intersubjectivity describes how racial differences affect the interchange of thoughts and feelings, both conscious and unconscious, that provide a shared perception of reality between two or more persons. This paper builds upon the literature regarding the effect of race on maternal competence by looking further into racial dynamics in mixed-race families. A careful analysis of the text demonstrates how racial differences between mothers and daughters inherently impact their intersubjectivity, thus complicating their reality

Motherhood and Gender Role: A Study of Employed Myanmar Diasporic Mothers in The Greater Toronto Area

This article focuses on motherhood and gender roles concerning first-generation migrant women from Myanmar (Burma) who have relocated to Canada. It explores to what extent the women of the Myanmar diaspora challenge or still maintain their gender norms and relations embedded in the sending country’s cultural context while simultaneously juggling the responsibilities among their multiple identities as mothers, wives, and employees through the lens of feminist mothering theory. The investigation is based on a review of maternal theorists and feminist migration scholars who explore the lived complexities of migrant mothers within the context of Southeast Asian migration to Western countries, as well as conducting a qualitative survey interview with eight employed Myanmar diasporic mothers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in 2020. Based on the findings, the paper argues that feminist mothering should be discussed as a combination of structural conditions (e.g., cultural beliefs, and material and economic demands) and subjective feelings about paid and unpaid work (e.g., domestic and child responsibilities)