Feminist-mother Writing as Creative Methodology: A South African Story

Abstract:

What does it mean to write about the mother in South African contexts? And what possibilities emerge when South African mothers write? Mother-writing is not new. There is a long history of writing by women about their experiences of becoming new mothers in the English language within the United States and the United Kingdom. Feminist mother-writing globally is sparse and, on the increase, but there is little such writing on the African continent. In South African feminist theory, the writing on motherhood leans towards the idea that women should not have children. Alongside the lack of a deeply historicised understanding of motherhood in South African contexts, is the gaping absence of writing on the interiority of the feminist-mothering experience. I try to write into this missing space of interiority. And since feminist thinking is anything but conventional, the force driving this thinking is about writing creatively, where existing theory fails. In this seminar, I consider the possibilities and methodologies of capturing complexity within experiences of motherhood through critical-creative writing.

Bio:

Nadia Sanger is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Studies at Stellenbosch University. Her research straddles the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences with an interest in Literary Studies, Feminist Studies, Critical Race Theory, and writing from the Global South. She is particularly focused on the potential of all kinds of stories to theorise. Nadia is the co-editor of the collection Racism, Violence, Betrayals and New Imaginaries: Feminist Voices (2022) and one of the co-editors of the book, Feeling lives: an intersectional exploration of past experiences and present living. Her current research project, a monograph, is critical-creative in form.