Abstract
The built spaces and discursive spaces that contemporary mothers inhabit constitute a powerful force that helps shape their subjectivities and their possibilities, define who mothers can be and what they can do at any given point in time. This chapter examines the role that space plays in creating and sustaining power relations involving mothers, with particular attention to how material or built spaces, and discursive spaces interact.
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Notes
Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, and Power,” in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, tr. from French by Christian Hubert (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 252.
Gillian Rose, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 124–125.
Some authors use space and place interchangeably; others distinguish between the two. For example, see Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). Edward S. Casey also analyzes the ways in which place has been subordinated to space and time in his The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose, eds., Writing Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), 3.
Dolores Hayden, in Redefining the American Dream: The Future of Housing, Work, and Family Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), 29, reports that beginning in 1869, Melusina Fay Pierce and her followers, known as the material feminists, tried to engage architects and urban planners to redefine housework and housing needs to propel “domestic evolution” and the equality of women.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, tr. from French by Alan Sheridan-Smith (New York: Random House, 1979), 205.
Michel Foucault, “Questions of Method,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Peter Miller, Graham Burchell, and Colin Gordon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 75.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. 1, tr. from French by Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978).
Michel Foucault, “The Eye of Power” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. and tr. from French by Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books 1980), 158. Although Foucault is read by some to suggest that discipline sometimes may be neutral or even positive rather than tyrannizing, I focus here on the aspects of discipline that limit and constrain mothers’ possibilities.
Michel Foucault, “The Eye of Power” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. and tr. from French by Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books 1980), 158. Although Foucault is read by some to suggest that discipline sometimes may be neutral or even positive rather than tyrannizing, I focus here on the aspects of discipline that limit and constrain mothers’ possibilities.
Of course, mothers are not the only ones to cook, clean, and serve in the kitchen, and not all mothers do so. But studies continue to show that mothers in heterosexual relationships do the bulk of this work, and some hope to keep it that way. See, for example, Laura Schlessinger, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).
Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 19.
Mona Harrington, Care and Equality: Inventing a New Family Politics (New York: Routledge, 1999), 106.
Melina Bau, Secrets of the Baby Whisperer (New York: Ballentine Books, 2001).
Pat Holt and Grace Ketterman, When You Feel Like Screaming! Help for Frustrated Mothers (Wheaton, IL: Shaw Publishers, 2000), 46–47.
John Leo, “A Great Story Never Told,” U.S. News and World Report 21, no. 22 (Dec. 2, 1996), 24.
Mary Douglas Vavrus, “From Women of the Year to ‘Soccer Moms’: The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Women,” Political Communication 17, no. 2 (Apr.–June 2000), 200. Vavrus analyzed seventy-four newspaper articles and seven television news programs during the 1996 election cycle. Though she acknowledges the term has consequences for public perceptions of women and politics, she finds the trope has greater force as a commercial than as a political metaphor (ibid., 194).
Ann Hulbert, “Angels in the Infield,” New Republic 215, no. 21 (Nov. 18, 1996), 46.
Thomas L. Dumm, Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996), 15.
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© 2005 Sarah Hardy and Caroline Wiedmer
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Marotta, M. (2005). MotherSpace: Disciplining through the Material and Discursive. In: Hardy, S., Wiedmer, C. (eds) Motherhood and Space. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-12103-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-12103-5_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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