“The mother is a child, too”: neoliberal segmentarity, reproductive futurism, and relationality in Enlightened

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines Mike White and Laura Dern’s HBO series Enlightened (2011–13) in relation to questions of segmentarity, motherhood, feminism, reproductive futurism, and neoliberal capitalism. Rather than looking at the series’ central whistleblower narrative, this article instead examines a secondary plot charting the protagonist’s affective investment in the plight of a Mexican immigrant and her two American children. Drawing on a Deleuzo-Guattarian framework, the article argues that Enlightened foregrounds the important connections between segmentarity and our contemporary neoliberal era, particularly in the context of current political debates surrounding immigration in the United States. The article also examines the ways in which Enlightened teases out the nationalist and neoliberal biases inherent in Lee Edelman’s formulation of reproductive futurism, and briefly draws on Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995), forging key comparisons between the film and Enlightened in relation to their shared interest in New Age spirituality, capitalism, maternity, and ecology. Through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking on segmentarity and becoming, the article argues that Enlightened posits alternative modes of community, mothering, and futurity.