Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T19:52:20.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Blood Relations: Feminist Theory Meets the Uncanny Alien Bug Mother

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2020

Lynda Zwinger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay addresses the troubling and uncanny figure of Mother in feminist theory, psychoanalytic theory, literary criticism, and real life. Readings of feminist literary criticism and the films Alien and Aliens explore the liminality of Mother and the consequences for feminist thought and practice of the persistent narrative modes (the sentimental and the gothic) locatable in all of these discourses on/of Motherhood.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 7 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Philosophy and Language , Spring 1992 , pp. 74 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aiken, Susan Hardy. 1990. Isak Dinesen and the engendering of narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Babcock, Barbara A. 1975. Why frogs are good to think and dirt is good to reflect on. Soundings 58 (2): 167–81.Google Scholar
Babcock, Barbara A. 1990. Mud, mirrors and making up: Liminality and reflexivity in Between the acts. In Victor Turner and the construction of cultural criticism: Between literature and anthropology, ed. Ashley, Kathleen M.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Byers, Thomas P. 1989. Kissing Becky: Masculine fears and misogynist moments in science fiction films. Arizona Quarterly 45 (3): 77–96.10.1353/arq.1989.0028CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chase, Donald. 1991. He's big, he's back, and he's really a pretty nice guy, once you get to know him. Entertainment Weekly, July 12, 12–18.Google Scholar
Creed, Barbara. 1989. Horror and the monstrous‐feminine: An imaginary abjection. In Fantasy and the cinema, ed. Donald, James. London: British Film Institute.Google Scholar
De Lauretis, Teresa. 1984. Alice doesn't: Feminism, semiotics, cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dougherty, Margot. 1991. A new body of work. Entertainment Weekly, July 12, 18–19.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1966. Puricy and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Fiedler, Leslie. 1966. Love and death in the American novel. New York: Stein and Day. Freud, Sigmund. 1953–74. The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Fiedler, Leslie. 1963a. Fetishism. In Sexuality and the psychology of love, ed. Rieff, Philip. New York: Collier.Google Scholar
Fiedler, Leslie. 1963b. Medusa's head. In Sexuality and the psychology of love, ed. Rieff, Philip. New York: Collier.Google Scholar
Gallop, Jane. 1982. The daughter's seduction: Feminism and psychoanalysis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallop, Jane. 1987. Reading the mother tongue: Psychoanalytic feminist criticism. Critical Inquiry 13 (2): 314–29.10.1086/448392CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gallop, Jane. 1989. The monster in the mirror: The feminist critic's psychoanalysis. In Feminism and psychoanalysis, ed. Feldstein, Richard and Roof, Judith. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gallop, Jane, Hirsch, Marianne, and Miller, Nancy K. 1990. Criticizing feminist criticism. In Conflicts in feminism, ed. Hirsch, Marianne and Keller, Evelyn Fox. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gimbutas, Marija. 1982. The gods and goddesses of old Europe, 6500–3500: Myths and cult images. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna J. 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jacobus, Mary. 1986. Reading woman: Essays in feminist criticism. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 1987. Stabat mater. In Tales of love, Trans. Roudiez, Leon S.New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Leach, Edmund. 1964. Anthropological aspects of language: Animal categories and verbal abuse. In New Directions in the Study of Language, ed. Lenneberg, E. H.Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mayne, Judith. 1990. The woman at the keyhole: Feminism and women's cinema. Blooming‐ton: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Penley, Constance. 1989. The future of an illusion: Film, feminism, and psychoanalysis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Roof, Judith. 1988. Reproductions of reproduction. Unpublished paper.Google Scholar
Roof, Judith. 1990. Freud reads lesbians: The male homosexual imperative. Arizona Quarterly 46 (1): 17–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sprengnether, Madelon. 1989. (M)other Eve: Some revisions of the fall in fiction by contemporary women writers. In Feminism and psychoanalysis, ed. Feldstein, Richard and Roof, Judith. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Stallybrass, Peter, and White, Allon. 1986. The politics and poetics of transgression. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Stone, Merlin. 1976. When God was a woman. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Walker, Barbara G. 1983. The woman's encyclopedia of myths and secrets. San Francisco: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Warner, Marina. 1976. Alone of all her sex: The myth and die cult of die Virgin Mary. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
White, Susan. 1988. Male bonding, Hollywood orientalism, and the repression of the feminine in Kubrick's Full metal jacket. Arizona Quarterly 44 (3): 120–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwinger, Lynda. 1991. Daughters, fathers, and the novel: The sentimental romance of heterosexuality. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar