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Promising Monsters: Pregnant Bodies, Artistic Subjectivity, and Maternal Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Rosemary Betterton
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Abstract

This paper engages with theories of the monstrous maternal in feminist philosophy to explore how examples of visual art practice by Susan Hiller, Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper, Tracey Emin, and Cindy Sherman disrupt maternal ideals in visual culture through differently imagined body schema. By examining instances of the pregnant body represented in relation to maternal subjectivity, disability, abortion, and “prosthetic” pregnancy, it asks whether the “monstrous” can offer different kinds of figurations of the maternal that acknowledge the agency and potential power of the pregnant subject.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 21 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Maternal Bodies , Winter 2006 , pp. 80 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by Hypatia, Inc.

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