Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)
Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)Not a member yet
1824 research outputs found
Sort by
Towards a Matricentric Feminist Poetics
Full text linkThe title of this article recalls that of Elaine Showalter’s essay "Towards a Feminist Poetics," in which she posits "gynocritics" as a term for a mode of "feminist criticism … concerned with woman as writer—with woman as the producer of textual meaning, with the history, themes, genres and structures of literature by women" (25). Here, I call for a matricentric feminist criticism, or "matricritics," where the latter refers to that area of literary criticism concerned with the mother as a writer and the attendant subjects. In attempting to draw up a matricritics, I begin by acknowledging the current rise in English-language maternal writing. I then, in the first part of this three-part article, list a number of formal tendencies common to this body of writing, drawing particularly on "Accumulations (Appendix F)" by Kate Zambreno. In the second part, in direct response to this taxonomy, I speculate on and begin to sketch out a critical methodology for reading maternal writing. The third part of the article is given over to a creative matricritical reading of "Appendix F"; this standalone piece is suggestive of how we might conceive of a matricentric feminist reading methodology in practice. An afterword highlights the matricritical elements at work in this alternative close reading
Towards Matricentric Feminism in the Caribbean: Inroads and Opportunities
Full text linkAlthough feminist and nonfeminist scholars have attempted to debunk the stereotypical representations and framings of matrifocality in the Caribbean, many gaps remain. This article argues that even though much of the scholarship on the Afro-Caribbean family has not centred on the specific realities and struggles of Black mothers, there have been substantive attempts on the part of Caribbean feminists and other non-feminist scholars to trouble the inherent biases within early explorations and theorization of matrifocality in the Caribbean. Where the consensus has been on the persistent disparagement of the Afro-Caribbean family, these scholars have collectively carved out important starting points for the development of a scholarship on and for Black mothers in the Caribbean. However, moving the scholarship on Black mothers forwards requires more critical epistemological and ontological frameworks. The hope is for the advancement of maternal scholarship that captures both the oppressive and neocolonial representations of the Black mother and explores the relative weight and effects of existing structures and relations of power on their lives across time, contexts, and social backgrounds. Such line of questioning opens the door for new perspectives, complexities, and politics around Black motherhood within the context of the Caribbean
Relational Resistance: (Re)telling and (Re)living Our Stories as Canadian Muslim Mothers and Daughters
Full text linkDrawing upon my experiences as a Canadian Muslim woman and mother, I engaged in a two-year narrative inquiry (Clandinin; Clandinin and Connelly) alongside three Canadian Muslim girls, and their mothers, as the girl co-inquirers transitioned into adolescence. Reverberating across the stories co-inquirers and I shared are experiences of living in the midst of, and in relation to, multiple arrogant perceptions (Lugones) and single stories (Adichie) of who we are— or should be—as good Muslim mothers and daughters. However, sharing, living, and inquiring into these stories alongside one another foregrounded the many ways we lived stories of relational resistance (Saleh, Stories We Live and Grow By). Ben Okri asserts that "one way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted—knowingly or unknowingly—in ourselves" (46). Re-presenting my inquiry journey alongside one pair of mother (Layla) and daughter (Maya) co-inquirers, I make visible many of the stories we live by, with, and in (Clandinin; (Saleh, Stories We Live and Grow By).) and how, together, we inquired into many of the stories that have been planted in us, the stories we are planting in ourselves and others, and the stories that we are relationally shaping and reshaping alongside one another. Thinking alongside Hilde Lindemann Nelson’s (1995) conceptualization of chosen communities as sites of resistance to taken-for-granted, dominant narratives, I make visible how we resisted arrogant perceptions and single stories of us as Muslim mothers and daughters
Access to a Basic Income: Exploring a Matricentric Feminist Approach to Poverty Alleviation for Mothers in Ontario
Full text linkWhile the literature on the nexus of poverty and motherhood is substantial, there is a dearth of scholarship exploring the intersection of basic income, poverty, and mothering. This article explores a matricentric feminist approach to poverty alleviation by means of access to a basic income. Such an approach recognizes that women, and mothers specifically, tend to be disadvantaged under current patriarchal, social and economic relations. Within this article, we consider the implications of basic income for mothers by exploring the merits and limitations of this approach to income security in several different domains. As such, we explore the impacts of basic income on mothers in relation to safe and affordable housing, quality childcare, and the overall health and wellbeing of mothers and their children
Deregulated Patriarchy and the New Sexual Contract: One Step Forwards and Two Steps Back
Full text linkSocial life has changed significantly over the last four decades. Women across the Western world have entered the workforce en masse, and, together with their partners, they have delayed (and in some cases eschewed) marriage and childbearing. Motherhood, which once seemed immutable and a natural function, is now subject to choice, including where, when, how, with whom, and if to have children. Women’s individualization is the key driver of these social changes as they have sought—both individually and collectively—to release themselves from the strictures of patriarchal family structures. But has patriarchy disappeared? It is my contention that it has not. Instead, it has become fluid as with other contemporary social structures. In the "poststructural social," patriarchy has become what I call "deregulated patriarchy." Women are not legally subordinated, as in the first age of modernity; rather women are normatively free and equal. However, this freedom is now extended to women in their caregiving capacities, and, thus, bearing and rearing children become women’s individual problem. In late modernity, motherhood has become an individualized risk, the consequences of which can be seen in women’s interrupted employment histories and drastically reduced lifetime earnings. Where divorce is normal, such individualized responsibility for children is a source of profound injustice. This situation produces a complex picture of women’s collective situation; women are free, and they are subordinated—it just depends on which phase of the life-course we are looking at. My key contention is that women are, with important intersectional differences, free as individuals and constrained as mothers, and that these two apparently polar outcomes are mutually constitutive, which generates major paradoxes in women’s civil status in contemporary Western societies