Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-05-25T04:56:01.025Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Shatter Not the Branches of the Tree of Anger: Mothering, Affect, and Disability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Abstract

Using the social interpretation of disability, Foucault's theory of disciplinary power, literary devices, and feminist literature, I write an affective narrative of mothering disabled children. In doing so I illustrate the ways in which the materiality of normalcy, surveillance, and embodiment can produce emotions that create docile mothers ashamed of their contribution to the world, conflicted mothers struggling with dissonant affects, and unruly, angry mothers battling against the architectures of their children's oppression.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alford, C. Fred. 2000. Sex, power, and the politics of identity. In Foucault live: Collected interviews, ed. Lotringer, Sylvere. New York: Semiotext(e).Google Scholar
Bargetz, Brigitte. 2015. The distribution of emotions: Affective politics of emancipation. Hypatia 30 (3): 580–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartky, Sandra Lee. 1990. Femininity and domination. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bell, McAlister. 2005. A woman's scorn: Toward a feminist defense of contempt as a moral emotion. Hypatia 20 (4): 8093.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackmon, Lisa. 2015. Affective politics, debility and hearing voices: Towards a feminist politics of ordinary suffering. Feminist Review 111: 2541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blum, Linda M. 2007. Mother‐blame in the Prozac nation: Raising kids with invisible disabilities. Gender and Society 21 (2): 202–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bombeck, Erma. 1983. Motherhood: The second oldest profession. New York: Open Road Integrated Media.Google Scholar
Brooks, Thom. 2008. Shame on you, shame on me? Nussbaum on shame punishment. Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (4): 322–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Brené. 2006. Shame resilience theory: A grounded theory study on women and shame. Families in Society 87 (1): 4352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chua, Amy. 2011. Battle hymn of the tiger mother. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Colker, Ruth. 2015. Blaming mothers: A disability perspective. Boston University Law Review 95 (3): 1205–24.Google Scholar
Coyne, Christopher J., and Mathers, Rachel L. 2011. Rituals: An economic interpretation. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 78 (1–2): 7484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Bronwyn. 1992. Women's subjectivity and feminist stories. In Investigating subjectivity: Research on lived experience, ed. Ellis, Carolyn and Flaherty, Michael. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage.Google Scholar
Deveaux, Monique. 1994. Feminism and empowerment: A critical reading of Foucault. Feminist Studies 20 (2): 223–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiQuinzio, Patrice. 1993. Exclusion and essentialism in feminist theory: The problem of mothering. Hypatia 8 (3): 120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finkelstein, Vic. 2001. The social model of disability repossessed. http://disability-studies.leeds.ac.uk/files/library/finkelstein-soc-mod-repossessed.pdf (accessed January 26, 2017).Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and punish. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1982. The subject and power. Critical Inquiry 8 (4): 777–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1991. Preface to The history of sexuality, vol. II. In The Foucault Reader, ed. Rabinow, P.Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.Google Scholar
Frantis, Linnea. 2013. Mothers as storytellers. In Disability and mothering: Liminal spaces of embodied knowledge, ed. , Cynthia‐Wilson and Cellio, Jen. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Gabel, Susan L., and Kotel, Kathy. 2015. Motherhood in the context of normative discourse: Birth stories of mothers of children with Down syndrome. Journal of Medical Humanities 115. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-015-9367-z (accessed December 4, 2017).Google Scholar
Galligan, Phillip. 2014. Shame, publicity, and self‐esteem. Ratio 29 (1): 5772.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garland‐Thomson, Rosemarie. 2005. Feminist disability studies. Signs 30 (2): 1557–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Paul. 2003. Evolution, social roles, and the differences in shame and guilt. Social Research 70 (4): 1205–30.Google Scholar
Harding, Jennifer, and Prilbram, Deidre E. 2002. The power of feeling: Locating emotions in culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies 5 (4): 407–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrington, Anne. 2016. Mother love and mental illness: An emotional history. Osiris 31 (1): 94115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janz, Bruce B. 2011. Shame and silence. South African Journal of Philosophy 3 (4): 462–71.Google Scholar
Kafka, Franz. 1925/1995. The trial. Trans. George Steiner, Willa Muir, and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Kanner, Leo. 1949. Problems of nosology and psychodynamics of early infantile autism. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Mental Health, and Social Justice 19 (3): 416–26.Google ScholarPubMed
Keller, Jean. 2010. Rethinking Ruddick and the ethnocentrism critique of Maternal thinking. Hypatia 25 (4): 834–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittay, Eva Feder. 1999. Love's labor: Essays on women, equality, and dependency. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Landsman, Gail. 1998. Reconstructing motherhood in the age of “perfect” babies: Mothers of infants and toddlers with disabilities. Signs 24 (1): 6999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landsman, Gail. 2009. Reconstructing motherhood and disability in the age of “perfect” babies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lavlani, Priya. 2011. Constructing the (m)other: Dominant and contested narratives on mothering a child with Down Syndrome. Narrative Inquiry 21 (2): 276–93.Google Scholar
Leeming, Dawn, and Boyle, Mary. 2013. Managing shame: An interpersonal perspective. British Journal of Social Psychology 52 (1): 140–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, Rich. 2009. Shame. Callaloo 32 (1): 135–36.Google Scholar
Lieb, Robert S. 2017. Spaces of the self: Foucault and Goffman on the micro‐physics of discipline. Philosophy Today 61 (1): 139210.Google Scholar
Locke, Jill. 2007. Shame and the future of feminism. Hypatia 22 (4): 146–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 1973. Who said it was simple. In From a land where other people live. Detroit: Broadside Press.Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 1981. The uses of anger. Women's Studies Quarterly 9 (3): 710.Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister outsider. Berkeley: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
Lyerly, Anne Drapkin. 2006. Shame, gender, birth. Hypatia 21 (1): 101–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McWeeny, Jen. 2010. Liberating anger, embodying knowledge: A comparative study of María Lugones and Zen Master Hakuin. Hypatia 25 (2): 295315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Narayan, Uma. 1988. Working together across difference: Some considerations on emotions and political practice. Hypatia 3 (2): 3147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nurka, Camille. 2012. Feminine shame/masculine disgrace: A literary excursion through gender and embodied emotion. Cultural Studies Review 18 (3): 311–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2006. Hiding from humanity: Disgust, shame, and the law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Olsen, Tillie. 1961. Tell me a riddle. New York: Dell.Google Scholar
Pedwell, Carolyn, and Whitehead, Anne. 2012. Affecting feminism: Questions of feeling in feminist theory. Feminist Theory 13 (2): 115–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Probyn, Elspeth. 2005. Blush: Faces of shame. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Rich, Adrienne. 1979. Of woman born: Motherhood as experience and institution. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Ruddick, Sara. 1980. Maternal thinking. Feminist Studies 6 (2): 342–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1995. Shame‐humiliation and contempt‐disgust. In Shame and its sisters: A Silvan Tomkins reader, ed. Sedgwick, E. K. and Frank, A.Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 2003. Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seiter, Ellen. 1986. Feminism and ideology: The “terms” of women's stereotypes. Feminist Review 22 (Spring): 5881.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sousa, Amy C. 2011. From refrigerator mothers to warrior‐heroes: The cultural identity transformation of mothers raising children with intellectual disabilities. Symbolic Interaction 34 (2): 220–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stass, Beth. 2008. Shame. North American Review 293 (5): 38.Google Scholar
Taylor, Tiffany, and Risman, Barbara J. 2006. Doing difference or speaking up: Deconstructing the experience and expression of anger. Race, Gender and Class 13 (3–4): 6080.Google Scholar
Thomas, Trudelle. 2003. Misfit mothers: Memoir by mothers of children with disabilities. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 5 (1): 186–97.Google Scholar
Titchkosky, Tanya. 2001. Disability: A rose by any other name? “People‐first” language in Canadian society. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 38 (2): 125–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, Judith. 2005. Perfect madness: Motherhood in the age of anxiety. New York: Riverhead Books.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar