An unlikely match? foucault and the lone mother

Law and Critique

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 59-88

  Wallbank, Julie ^a  

^a LANCASTER UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0006354543     PISSN: 09578536     EISSN: 15728617     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF02699908     Document Type: Article

References (81)

1. Liz Lochead on the subject of mother from Dreaming Frankenstein and Collected Poems (London: Polygon, 1984).
2. M. Foucault, "Two Lectures" in Power /Knowledge, ed. and trld. C. Gordon (New York: Panthéon, 1977), 93.
3. J. Wallbank, "The Campaign for Change of the Child Support Act 1991: Reconstituting the 'Absent' Father", Social and Legal Studies 6/2 (1997), 191216;
4. and R. Collier, Masculinity, Law and the Family (London: Routledge, 1995).
5. Supra n.2.
6. Ibid., at 96.
7. The extent to which this has occurred has since been challenged by Carol Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law (London: Routledge, 1989), 8.
8. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trld. A. Sheridan (Peregrine Harmondsworth, 1977), 183.
9. M. Foucault, "The eye of power", supra n.2, at 155.
10. C. Ramazonglu, ed., Up Against Foucault: Explorations of Some Tensions Between Foucault and Feminism (London: Routledge, 1993), 22.
11. For an analysis of how eating disorders arise out of normative feminine practices see S. Bordo, "Reading the slender body", in Body I Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science, ed. M. Jacobus, E. Fox Keller and S. Shuttleworth (London: Routledge, 1990), 83-112.
12. See for example Collier, supra n.3; J Donzelot Policing Families (London: Hutchinson, 1980);
13. N. Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (London: Routledge, 1989);
14. V. Walkerdine and H. Lucey, Democracy in the Kitchen: Regulating Mothers and Socialising Daughters (London: Virago, 1989).
15. Supra n.2, at 194.
16. J. Ransom, "Feminism, difference and discourse: The limits of discursive analysis for feminism", in Ramazanoglu, supra n.9, at 135.
17. In "Truth and Power", Foucault argues that discourse makes possible a whole range of interventions which have traditionally been seen as repressive. He argues against this that discourse has produced the human subject, and the case he cites here is the sexualised infant, supra n.2, at 120.
18. E. Probyn, Sexing the Self: Gendered Positions in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1993), 16.
19. I.M. Young, Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 12.
20. Ibid., at 14.
21. Ibid., at 30.
22. C. Weedon, Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 32-33.
23. See also Luce Irigaray, who urges women to reclaim their subjectivity by rejecting both the idea and the use of the gender-neutral voice which she claims is a passive voice that distances the subject from the object and conceals the identity of the speaker from the reader. For her, only when women speak in an active, gendered voice do they avoid the false security and inauthenticity of the passive voice in "Is the Subject of Science Sexed?" trld. C.M. Bove, Hypatia 2/3 (1987), 66.
24. "Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women?", in Feminism I Postmodernism, ed. L.J. Nicholson (London: Routledge, 1990), 157-175.
25. Ibid., at 168.
26. Supra n.2, at 98.
27. Ibid.
28. Supra n.19, at 169.
29. M. Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol.1, trld. R. Hurley (London: Penguin, 1 981), 48.
30. Supra n.19, at 169.
31. Ibid.
32. Supra n.24, at 123-24.
33. See also M.E. Bailey, "Foucauldian feminism: Contesting bodies, sexuality and identity", in Ramazanoglu, supra n.9, at 113-4.
34. Supra n. 19, Introduction at 5-6.
35. M. Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 68.
36. N. Fraser and L.J. Nicholson, "Social Criticism without Philosophy: An Encounter between Feminism and Postmodernism", in Nicholson, supra n.19, at 28.
37. Ibid., at 31.
38. Supra n. 12, at 132.
39. S. Phelan, "Foucault and Feminism", American Journal of Political Science 34/2 (1990), 421-440.
40. I found this to be the case with mothers interviewed for my doctoral thesis. J. Wallbank, Reconstructing Mothers and Fathers in Contemporary Debates on Child Support and the Lone-Parent Family (Unpublished thesis: Lancaster University, 1996).
41. Supra n.24, at 100-101.
42. Weedon, supra n. 18, at 125.
43. S. Boyd, "Is there an Ideology of Motherhood in (Post)modern Child Custody Law?" (unpublished, 1995).
44. See further Collier, supra n.10, at 70-71.
45. N. Rose, "Transcending the Public/Private", Journal of Law and Society 14/1 (1987), 67,
46. B. Campbell, Goliath: Britain's Dangerous Places (London: Methuen, 1993), 306.
47. See also N. Dennis and G. Erdos, Families Without Fatherhood (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1992).
48. Wallbank, supra n.3.
49. S.1(1) of the Children and Young Person's Act, 1933.
50. The Times, August 20th 1993. It was reported in The Guardian on the same day that a non-custodial sentence would have "risked sending the wrong signals to parents tempted to leave very young children for long periods of time" (August 20th 1993).
51. The Times (August 29th 1993).
52. Daily Mail (August 20th 1993).
53. The Daily Telegraph (August 3rd and 4th 1993);
54. The Times (August 20th 1 993).
55. The Daily Telegraph (August 3rd 1993).
56. Daily Mail (August 4th 1993).
57. The Times (August 20th 1993).
58. The Daily Telegraph (August 4th 1993).
59. The Guardian (August 28th 1993).
60. The Guardian (August 5th 1993).
61. Daily Mail (August 20th 1993).
62. The Independent (August 3rd 1993).
63. In his budget July 2nd 1997, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, introduced measures designed to encourage lone mothers back into employment.
64. The mother's ability to fulfil this function has come under strident attack recently. See the Institute of Economic Affairs' publication, supra n.42, which was utilised by Peter Lilley in his 1993 Conservative Party Conference Speech.
65. R. Lister, "Women, Economic Dependency and Citizenship", Journal of Social Policy 19/4 (1990), 445-67.
66. Children Come First, The Government's proposals on the maintenance of children, vols.l & 2, (London: HMSO, October 1990).
67. Cited in Against Redistributing Poverty (London: Wages for Housework Campaign and Payday Men's Network, 1993, 2nd ed.).
68. S. Lawler, Mothering the Self: A Study of the Mother-Daughter Relationship (unpublished thesis, Lancaster University, 1995).
69. Lawler uses a childcare manual of the 1960's to point out how the mother is reduced to the child's "facilitating environment" (at 264 citing D.W Winnicott, "The Development of the capacity for Concern", in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, ed. D.W. Winnicott (New York: International Universities, 1965), 1-23.
70. Lawler, ibid.
71. Ibid., at 270.
72. M. Woodhead, "Psychological and the Cultural Construction of Children's Needs", in Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, ed. A. James and A. Prout, (London: Falmer Press, 1990), 39-57.
73. Harrington v. Hynes [1982] 8 Family Law Reports (Australia) 295-76;
74. R. Graycar, "Equal Rights Versus Father's Rights", in Child Custody and the Politics of Gender, ed. C. Smart and S. Sevenhuijsen (1989),
75. cited in K. CCDonovan, Family Law Matters (London: Routledge, 1993), 76.
76. For a discussion of the "sensitive" mother see Walkerdine and Lucey, supra n.10, at 57-63. Also Rose, supra n.10, at 200-209.
77. N. Rose, "Governing the enterprising self, in The Values of the Enterprise Culture, ed. P. Heelas & P. Moms (London: Routledge, 1992), 156-57.
78. N. Fräser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 145.
79. Supra n.69, at 145.
80. Ibid., at 164.
81. Wallbank, supra n.3.