The Mother and the Process of Truth

Abstract

Here we follow Baraitser (Maternal Encounters: The Ethics of Interruption,2009) as she formulates a maternal subjectivity, situated quite outside the mother-as-object in psychoanalysis—the mother-supposed-to-care. The backdrop is the Levinasian “implacable law of hospitality,” which is the feminine, elaborated by Ettinger (2006) as the “matrixial.” Subjectivity is realised in breaks in the continuity of being. And what emerges in this work is the subject and her fidelity to the Event, the truth and the living of it forever, beyond postmodern simulations of motherhood. In short, having a child changes you; you will never be the same again! Fidelity creates subjection, being thrown down, onto the bedrock of the Real. This is where everything begins!