About GEM : Center for Research on Motherhood and Mothering

The Center for Research on Motherhood and Mothering was created in 2003. The first international and pluridisciplinary conference of the center will take place in Bordeaux in December 1-3, 2005, on the subject of « Mothers and Death : Ethical and Aesthetic Issues Around the Lethal Mother-Child Relationship ». The conference proceedings will be published in 2006.

We hold regular seminars addressing the issue across the disciplines and study the artistic and literary representations of the mother-child relationship in its lethal aspects throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. To desire, conceive, but also raise the offspring of one’s body and mind confronts us in varied ways (biological, psychological, philosophical) to the idea, image or even reality of death. Artists of all nationalities, men and women, depict the destructive mother-child relationship (stillbirth, death of the mother in childbirth, death of the child at a later age, infanticide, post-partum depression and psychosis, as well as matricide) be it in their paintings, photographs, literary works or films.

How do artists articulate the death-(pro)creation link ? What are the aesthetic strategies used to represent the lethal maternal body ? Are there recurrent tropes and topoi ? If so, have they evolved ? Does the fact that artists can envisage, consciously or not, the death of their children influence their creative process? Can one see in the relationship between the maternal and death a way to rehabilitate the idea of woman in her creative as well as procreative agency? How are both genre and gender informed by death and the maternal? Are there specificities regarding ethnicity, class and gender?

Works of art being a reflection of mentalities and social practices, we explore the evolution of the maternal-death issue in societies all over the world from the 18th century onward and rely, for instance, on the theories of women’s psychology and psychoanalysis. In some cultures (India, China, and Africa) maternal infanticide (especially of baby girls) though unlawful, is still common. Nowadays, in Western societies, despite the battles fought by feminists in the 60s and 70s for legal abortion, contraception, and widespread day-care, women are still faced with puerperal depressions and psychoses. How has the ethical positioning linked to this issue evolved since the 18th century? To what extent is this evolution reflected in works of art? What role did historic traumas (such as wars, genocides) or socio-political practices such as slavery and racial discrimination play in this evolution? Is it still possible to speak today of a taboo of the “dead or deadly mother” ? How is it linked with the taboo of death in our societies? How has the issue been envisaged by feminists? Does the ethic of care, as it is expounded by Gilligan, help in rethinking this problem ?

We aim to determine if the myths of Medea and Electra can be considered to be founding myths in the artistic and/or social realms on the same basis as the Oedipus myth.

If you are interested in the center’s activities and seminars, please write Pascale Sardin, Elisabeth Julie Sauvage and Elisabeth Lamothe to the following address : infogem@free.fr

Contacts :

infogem@free.fr