Dates: 27th-28th April 2023 (see daily schedules for full timings)

Location: Kingston University, London (see daily schedules for exact locations)

Open to all, registration essential

“[T]he body in extremis – the body experiencing itself acutely as a body – is a human reality to which mothers cannot help but have access, although once again they are expected to put a lid on it, to make everything sweet and nice. They can, they must, love, hold, coddle their babies, but on condition of warding off the danger of any spillages – blood, guts, misery and lust. Their task is to prevent such intensities from going too far, to clean out the drains, on behalf of everyone. […] So how to tell the tales of love of and for mothers? Or, how to listen to the tales that mothers choose to tell?”

Jacqueline Rose, Mothers

It is often assumed that questions regarding the bodily dimension of human life have primarily to do with biological or medical inquiries and are not central in the humanities field. Over time, this excluded topics such as motherhood, sexuality and reproduction from philosophical and political landscape. Recent feminist, post-colonial, and critical theories have offered perspectives that deconstruct artificial notions of subjectivity and thematize corporeality in relation to questions of normativity, identity and political visibility.

This two-day, transdisciplinary symposium will explore how renewed attention to the human body (particularly those bodies othered by patriarchal norms) in philosophy, politics, literature and psychosocial studies has paved the way for a rethinking of motherhood, reproductive loss, disability and death beyond the biological category. How does this reflection contribute to naming, elaborating, and making visible concrete aspects of human life in their connection to gender, race, sexuality?

The event will present creative writing, poetic works, lectures and performances that illustrate, inform or question how we represent the visceral body within text and in philosophical /political inquiries when we attempt to give voice to experiences and events that are, by their nature (within cultural frameworks of course) graphic, shocking, bloody, illicit...

We ask, how do we navigate the ‘horror’ or embarrassment of these subjects through writing and theoretical reflection? How do we share real and even brutal experiences without them becoming sensational or shocking in a way that negates their complexity? What kind of literary forms, what kinds of language, do we turn to in our attempts? This is not about how we make these experiences palatable, but, rather, how we battle to make them communicable in a way that does not underestimate the experience and allows us to see it from multiple perspectives.

We will address these questions through a combination of presentations and performances by PhD students, academics, writers, artists and dancers.

Keynote speakers: Professor Lisa Baraitser, poet Rachel Long, Dr Anna McFarlane and Professor Stella Villarmea

The event will lead to the publication of a special issue in the Studies in the Maternal journal.  More info coming soon.