Abstract
ABSTRACT This essay explores mothers inhabiting the impossible position of carrying life and death’s trauma. It delves into how this relation to death is not only entwined with the mother and infant’s bodily conditions, but also with the birth of the human subject and the divide that constitutes us. By viewing the mother’s crossing between life and death as a perpetual, moment-to-moment encounter, this paper discusses the impossible, idealized injunctions placed upon the mother, alongside the burdened demand to bear the most difficult and disavowed aspects of humanity. Drawing from Bracha Ettinger’s (2006) work on intergenerational affective traces and a collective engagement with history, the essay uses vignettes to illustrate instances of the mother’s relation to death in the unconscious, the significance of symbolization, and the possibilities that come with it.
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