Troubling Mothers: Introduction

Abstract

This panel explored a range of classed figurations of the maternal. It had two primary aims: firstly, to explore the relationship between social class and 'the maternal' and secondly to foreground the relative absence of psycho-social or psychoanalytic theoretical work on what Diane Reay has called 'The Psychic Landscape of Social Class' (2005). The data explored in this panel primarily originates from 'social spheres', popular and sensationalist media, art practice and 'everyday life'. It aimed to engage with analysis of these mediums and materials, and to initiate debate about the ways in which visible class representations and invisible class relations structure not only 'maternal publics' and also our most intimate, personal and 'interior' sense of ourselves as 'maternal subjects', as well as the ways in which 'visceral aversions, recognition, abjection and the markings of taste constitute a psychic economy of social class [that] contributes powerfully to the ways we are, feel and act' (Reay, 2005, p. 911). Four speakers presented their work on mothers, and three of these talks have been developed for publication in this issue.