Not Just ‘A Life Within the Home’

Abstract

During the early twentieth century, as the Irish nation was coming into being, to raise a family was a woman’s patriotic goal. Her role as mother has been cemeneted in Article 41, Section 2 of the Irish constitution, binding a woman’s political duties to her ability to raise a family. Several motherperformance artists, including Amanda Coogan, Áine Phillips and me, EL Putnam, challenge this constitutional rhetoric and the historically designated political positionalities of mothers in Ireland. Instead of delegating the maternal to the private domestic sphere, these performance artists transform gestures, images and materials affiliated with motherhood into acts of resistance. Using Lauren Berlant’s definition of the intimate public sphere — where sex and citizenship are intertwined — in this paper, I discuss how these performance artists challenge Ireland’s relegation of the domestic to the private sphere of the home while redefining the maternal in this national and cultural context. I argue that these artists blur the boundary between maternal labour and art work through performance actions that draw from domestic experiences. In order to interpret these performances, I draw from Hannah Arendt’s distinction between labour, work and action. According to Arendt, while labor consists of the repetitious activity needed to meet daily needs and maintain life, work is an individualising activity that transcends biological need. Arendt describes how labour and work can be performed by individuals, but action requires plurality as it occurs between human beings and is key for political participation. As such, these mother performance artists merge maternal labour with art work through performance action, taking advantage of the collective experience of the live encounter while redefining the Irish maternal through public discourse. In turn, I suggest that these artists provide possibilities for a performative politics of the maternal in Ireland that resists Catholic ideology and constitutional rhetoric.