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The Performing Mother: Maternal Ethics Beyond

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THE PERFORMING MOTHER: MATERNAL ETHICS BEYOND EMBODIMENT by CHARLES HICKS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON May 2015 Copyright © by Charles Hicks 2015 All Rights Reserved ii Acknowledgements I am indebted to the plethora of individuals that have made this work possible. My committee – Penelope Ingram, Tim Richardson, and Neill Matheson – has worked tirelessly in order to encourage the progress of this project at all stages. Penelope Ingram especially has fostered an environment of intellectual growth throughout and offered invaluable advice at all junctures. As a mentor she has surpassed all imaginable expectations and, as a scholar, has provided an exceptional and admirable model of academic prowess. The exigence of this project and my academic thought lies primarily in the three classes of hers that I was fortunate enough to attend and her work, Signifying Body offered me the opportunity to find my voice in a complex and challenging discourse. Peers and mentors from within the English Department at the University of Texas at Arlington have helped tremendously with the completion of this project. It would be remiss not acknowledge the tremendous guidance provided by Bruce Krajewski, whose insight and experience were invaluable. Bethany Shaffer provided not only kindness during my most stressful times, but encouragment that was essential. In addition, Peggy Kulesz’s support to not only this project, but my academic career in its entirety, cannot be quantified. There are few people that have had a more profoundly positive influence on my life. I owe an immense debt of gratitude to my family. My parents, Tim and Jan, have not only supported my Ph.D. work from the onset, but have served as iii ideal models of integrity and work ethic. My sister, Christine, has provided a sturdy foundation for the most difficult of times, injecting the inevitable cyniscim of any lengthy project with idealism and energy. Finally, to my partner, Skye Solmonson, who has spent countless hours reading and editing chapters. This work is as much hers as it is mine, as her support goes far beyond merely providing helpful critiques. If this project has succeeded in outlining, at the very least, the possibilities of ethical activity, it is only because I had such a wonderful muse in her. April 20, 2015 iv Abstract THE PERFORMING MOTHER: MATERNAL ETHICS BEYOND EMBODIMENT Charles Hicks, PhD The University of Texas at Arlington, 2015 Supervising Professor: Penelope Ingram The rich and diverse history of maternal thought is at once a response to the Western philosophical tradition’s relegation of the maternal to the material abject, as well as a renegotiation of the maternal body as a site of empowerment capable of destabilizing the foundations of the symbolic economy. Understanding the material and historical conditions that subject these bodies and work to construct maternity, as well as their mediating position to authentic ethical activity, reveals that maternity offers a salient schemata for, not only viewing the fundamental operations of power, but the possibilities of ethical interaction. This study focuses on, not only theoretical texts dealing with the maternal body, but in science fiction and horror works in order to highlight the possibility of discursive transcendence for non-procreative bodies achieved through performance. This project argues, initially, that the maternal body is subjected to an ideologically pervasive and historically saturated ideal of motherhood in order to produce v sanctioned forms of maternity that secure the reproduction of the very conditions and structure that legitimize their subjection. Secondly, this essay posits that discursive transcendence – meaning the possibility of signifying and identity beyond the prescribed monomaternalist ideal – can be achieved immanently through the institution of a masochistic contract and the infinite performance of the masochistic fantasy shared between mother and infant. In Chapter Four, I argue that Deleuze’s theory of masochism, derived from Leopold Sacher- Masoch’s Venus in Furs, offers an interesting framework for viewing the subjection of biologically reproductive mothers, as well as a vibrant ground for the development of a theory of maternity based on performance. Finally, in Chapter Five, I argue for a reevaluation of the way in which we conceive non- procreative maternal identity and outline how the non-reproductive body takes part in the same masochistic disavow as the biological mother, yet the result is not the creation of a new and distinct identity, but the complete dissolution of the self where the past is infinitely severed from the trajectory of the future, the previous form of the subject obliterated. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ iii Abstract ................................................................................................................... v Chapter 1 Introduction: Maternal Embodiment and Performance .......................... 1 1.1 The Feminine and Transcendence ................................................................ 8 1.2 The Semiotic and the Abject: ...................................................................... 14 1.3 Irigaray and the Sensible Transcendental: .................................................. 29 1.4 A More Material Transcendence ................................................................ 48 1.5 From Embodiment to Performance ............................................................. 58 1.6 Scope of Study ............................................................................................ 69 Chapter 2 Transcendence Forestalled ................................................................... 74 2.1 Eros and the Past ......................................................................................... 79 2.2 Husserl and Intentionality ........................................................................... 88 2.3 Levinas and the Face ................................................................................... 96 2.4 Heideggerian Death and Levinasian Birth ................................................ 103 2.5 Hypostasis and the Psychic Life of Power ................................................ 113 2.6 The Third Party and Power ....................................................................... 122 Chapter 3 The Crystalline Image of Maternity ................................................... 149 3.1 The Monstrous Body and Maternity ......................................................... 153 3.2 Alien and Undifferentiated Being ............................................................. 165 3.3 The Phallic Mother as Ideal Projection ..................................................... 176 vii 3.4 The Genealogy of the Image ..................................................................... 194 3.5 The Crystalline Image of Maternity .......................................................... 210 Chapter 4 Maternal Performativity and the Masochistic Contract ..................... 227 4.1 Madness and Subject Formation ............................................................... 231 4.2 The Three Syntheses of Time ................................................................... 248 4.3 The Death Instinct and Masochism .......................................................... 255 4.4 Masochism and the Mother ....................................................................... 263 4.5 Maternity and Masochism ........................................................................ 273 Chapter 5 Adoptive Maternity and the Dissolution of Self ................................ 309 5.1 From Past to Future ................................................................................... 311 5.2 Adoptive Maternity and the Futural Horizon ........................................... 314 5.3 Return to Immanence ................................................................................ 328 5.4 Collective Transcendence ......................................................................... 336 References ........................................................................................................... 354 Biographical Information .................................................................................... 402 viii Chapter 1 Introduction: Maternal Embodiment and Performance In maternity what signifies is a responsibility for others, to the point of substitution for others and suffering both from the effect of persecution and from the persecuting itself in which the persecutor sinks. Maternity, which is bearing par excellence, bears even responsibility for the persecuting by the persecutor. Emmanuel Levinas Otherwise Than Being In “Performing Breastfeeding: Embodiment, Ethics and the Maternal Subject,” author Rhonda Shaw claims that “in Western culture, men and women, generally speaking, have a problem talking seriously about breastfeeding,” a prejudice that “stems from the accepted view that because breastfeeding is such an immanently somatic, in-the-body practice, it is often viewed as morally, philosophically, and politically insignificant” (100). In the article Shaw illustrates that this stereotype is derived from the association of women with the domestic sphere, along
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