Mother Medea and Her Children: Maternal Ambivalence in the Medean Plays of Marina Carr, Cherríe Moraga, and Rachel Cusk

"The mothership is a homebase. It is the site of return, of respite, of comfort when no other is possible. It bears connotations of care but also of military operations (naval ships), and of the otherworldly (UFOs). Regardless of its application, the mothership exists for the support of other entities; it does not exist without its dependents. Perhaps this is why the term 'mothership' is also used as one of endearment for human mothers. Her gravid state extends well into the life of her children as they first cling to and then orbit her. With their orbits widening as they grow and change from baby to child, child to teen, and from teen into adult, their states fluctuate while even after they have left home and possibly started families of their own, the woman remains 'mother'. The condition of 'mother' is constant. Even before a woman becomes a mother, there is a societal expectation that this is her inevitable state, that it is her natural place and role to inhabit. ... It is therefore important to me that, through my artwork and corresponding research, these ideas be addressed and pushed against using formal and theoretical mechanisms. To accomplish this in this writing, I consider the position of the relationships between viewer and subjects through an analysis of "the maternal gaze", the internal relationship between subjects through what could be described as an analysis of "intersubjectivity," and an analysis of the idea of holding multiple positions simultaneously as "maternal ambivalence". These ideas are rooted in maternal theory, which works relationally across disciplines, and takes up residence in practices of visual and critical studies, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. Facets of this research address domestic space as the site of my work and this locale's relationship to maternal identity. Vernacular technology, provisional craft, painting and processes through which these ideas are mediated are discussed throughout this paper. Mediation here taking on both definitions of the term: remediation (the literal representation of media through other media) and intervention (to interrupt with the purpose of altering the result) are present in the work. You can see that in portions of the image-objects, photography has been representationally painted, or it has been blocked by stitching, stuffing or painting, and in other locations it has been left to exist as photographic. These combinations of processes serve to convey ideas of maternal practice in formal ways and aim to reposition contemporary maternity as a cybernetic hybrid between natural and artificial. The following document was prepared and presented to demonstrate my research during the course of my graduate study at the University of Missouri. It includes reflection upon the work I created during this time, a culminating artist statement and a significant buttress of theoretical underpinnings and artistic investigation which throughout my time in this program has spanned issues of bias inherent in social technology, consent and capitalism, assumptions about pleasure and pain, vulnerability and language, anxiety about the future, and finally landed on maternal ambivalence, which seemed to embody all of these ideas. I present this work as a synthesis of the last 4 years, wherein I allowed myself to experiment and research freely, and with guidance from a team of excellent faculty, graduate peers and friends. I hope to take the reader on a journey, but it is a twisting road with lots of offshoots, because that is ultimately the path I chose, and the road that led me to this culminating document and body of work had many detours."--From Introduction.

Download Full-text