A critical step to the side: Performing the loss of the mother

Aston, Elaine (2007) A critical step to the side: Performing the loss of the mother. Theatre Research International, 32 (2). pp. 130-142. ISSN 0307-8833

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Abstract

This essay sets out to ask in what ways it might be critically productive to come back to the maternal as a subject for feminism. Drawing on Eve Sedgwick's desire to 'loosen' the antiessentialist drive to get 'beyond' gender, and her consideration in this respect of a non-dualistic idea of 'beside', I locate my analysis in three performances, examined 'beside' each other. Each of these performances is a solo show: Anna Yen's Chinese Take Away (1997), SuAndi's The Story of M (1994) and Kazuko Hohki's Toothless (1998). Moreover, each solo is located in different inter-national, maternal geographies: Asian/Australian (Yen), black British (SuAndi) and Japanese/British (Hohki), and each performs the loss of the mother by the daughter. Working also with Judith Butler's proposal that grief and loss afford a political, transformative means of 'becoming undone', I 'read' these three international geographies of the maternal side by side as different from each other, but all connected to the critical project of rethinking the maternal.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Theatre Research International
Additional Information:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=TRI The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Theatre Research International, 32 (2), pp 130-142 2007, © 2007 Cambridge University Press.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/core/keywords/contemporaryartsandperformance/theatrestudiesandperformance
Subjects:
?? theatre studies and performancevisual arts and performing artsliterature and literary theoryn visual arts (general) for photography, see tr ??
ID Code:
54686
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
29 May 2012 10:37
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
18 Dec 2023 01:16