By Ruth Skilbeck
Here, as promised, is my report on the MIRCI International Conference on Mothers and History: Histories of Motherhood in the growing transnational field of matricentric feminism and motherhood studies.
Here, as promised, is my report on the MIRCI International Conference on Mothers and History: Histories of Motherhood in the growing transnational field of matricentric feminism and motherhood studies.
1.
Monday 14 May 2012
Today I returned from a very inspiring and
stimulating conference in Canada, the international conference on Mothers and
History: Histories of Motherhood, hosted by the world leading research centre
Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI) founded
and directed by Professor Andrea O'Reilly and based at York University in
Toronto. I gave a paper and presentation on my current and ongoing
creative writing and cultural studies research into impacts of adoption and its aftermath on families in Australia, based on my own family history and
experiences that I have been researching since before my mother passed away, in 2008.
I presented my paper in a session on the conference theme Empowering
Mothers.
Remembering
Australia's Forgotten Mothers- Identity and Colonial History.
My paper began to tell my personal story written as
grief and as healing, of how I began to find a secret hidden grandmother in my
family, starting by briefly outlining the historical context of the ‘Stolen Generations’
in Australia in the 20th century- an era when possibly 100 000s of
children mainly but not only of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait descent were forcibly removed from their families
and brought up as wards of state or adopted. In my paper I tell the story of how I began
to find out about my hidden grandmother, and how in the process I switched
roles as an art writer and journalist to writing about myself and my own family
experiences of hidden history. At the time of writing the paper I had not discovered
my mother’s family.
The paper interweaves creative writing, blog
entries (from this blog), extract from a novel-in-progress I am writing, and my
digital photographs (on this blog).
“I
share my story as grief and as healing. This is my personal story and the views
I express about the history and culture in twentieth century Australia, and the
events I recount in relation to my mother’s life, are seen-and-felt through the
prism of grieving and in the process of healing through recovery of family memory
and identity, my mother’s family; ‘lost’ in colonial history. These are not “easy” views to express in the
open space of the public sphere (and such views are probably more usually
repressed or kept to oneself or within a family) yet I am taking this communicative
action in the conscious hope that through expression of grief in the public
sphere of a knowledge community, in the creative process of writing and sharing
this story healing may come; that it will be a process of personal and cultural
catharsis, the kind of emotional release, and expression, that comes from
playing or listening to music, and dancing… this time to a mourning song. More deeply, I am driven to write of this
journey from an “unspeakable” place (Kristeva 1981), where words are rhythms,
of a psychic chain, a primal memory of a heart beat, and where the interplay of
word and hand and mind and screen, the writing machine, replaces that originary
matrixical machine; it is something I am compelled to do, I cannot not write
this story. Winnicott theorized the “transitional object” that a child uses to
replace “the absent mother”. (Winnicott
1974). Can self made art objects and works of writing fulfill this function, in
the process of the creation and play of writing art? For some, I reflect,
self-based writing becomes or re-creates its own transitional object.”….
“Why
I chose to tell my story is as part of the process of grief and healing,
bearing witness. On reflection, it is using emotionalism as a strategy of communicative action in the public
sphere (Habermass 1984):
To
not be forgotten to not forget
To
speak out against the night of
silence and sadness” (Skilbeck 2012).
The paper was well received. In the audience were
several delegates from Australian universities, and my research met with strong
words of support. “I am saddened but thrilled that you are doing this [pursuing
this research]”, was one comment of support from a delegate who works for
Queensland Health.
2.
My paper was part of a panel entitled Empowering
Mothers, chaired by Dr Fiona Joy Green, Chair of the Women's and Gender Studies
Department, University of Winnipeg.
The other panelists were Wanda Thomas Bernard and
Claudine Bonner, Dalhousie University presenting on "An Ethic of
Protection and Care: African Nova Scotian Mothers".
They discussed their research project exploring the
“lived experiences of African Nova Scotian women from three long-standing
communities” through their stories, and oral histories their story-tellers
“spoke of their mothers in community roles…
mothering not just their own children, but their communities... In these
roles they also serve as role models as well”. The picture that emerges in
their talk is of close knit and caring communities kept together, so that
despite relatives and friends sometimes having to leave the community and
country, the community is kept together
by those who take on the role of ‘mothers’.
This closely knit community of survival juxtaposed the history in my own paper of the ‘stolen
generations’ in 20th century Australia, when at least 100 000 babies and children were taken from mothers
under a white Australia policy of assimilation, yet there are threads of shared
strength and these come from the mothers in the community again, in my paper I
quoted Aunty Shirley, Australian Aboriginal activist, speaking at a rally in
2007, where she speaks out for the mothers who had the pain of having their babies taken from them, but who still endure, as the
backbone of the country (Skilbeck 2007).
A very different perspective came from
Sweden.
It was interesting to hear about the different experiences
of mothers and parents rights in Sweden where the state grants a maternity or
paternity grant of over a year to be taken by either parent, and the positive
benefits of this that are appreciated by citizens.
As well as presenting a paper, I chaired an opening session, on the theme of Representing Mothers.
As well as presenting a paper, I chaired an opening session, on the theme of Representing Mothers.
3.
The conference was a diverse, thought provoking, three
days of papers and presentations by a wide range of feminist motherhood studies
academics, artists, activists and advocates from around the world, convened by
Professor Andrea O’Reilly pioneer of matricentric feminist theory and practice,
who has worked in the field for three decades.
Overarching ideas interlacing the main conference themes of the new 21st
century motherhood movement were that: mothers need a feminism of our own (like a
room of our own); that motherhood is the unfinished face of feminism; and that
racially, culturally, transnationally diverse matricentric feminism is the new
face of feminism.
Under this umbrella were a variety of research
papers exploring many aspects of motherhood from feminist perspectives: from
longitudinal studies of what feminism means to daughters of feminist mothers,
to first person artist projects, to cultural and medical histories and media
representations of motherhood, childcare and adoption, and histories of
indigenous motherhood in colonial contexts. Delegates came from universities
around the world.
At least five of the conference delegates were from
Australia including Dr Marie Porter (founding president of Motherhood
Initiative for Research and Community Involvement- Australia [MIRCI-A, and
Honoury Senior Research Fellow in the School of English, Media Studies
and Art History at the University of Queensland ), Dr Jennifer Jones (Queensland Health) and London-born, Adelaide contemporary
artist Simone Kennedy, who is doing a PhD in art and theory on the absent
mother, at the University of South Australia.
4.
As with the best conferences, communication and
exchange happens in the margins as well as the mainstream presentations.
I had interesting and fruitful conversations
and exchanges of ideas, information and perceptions in a number of talks, including over dinner with Simone Kennedy; finding that not only were we both
born in London, brought up in England, and moved to Australia at the same age,
but that we also each for years had worked with a persistent symbolic motif of
dissociation- of absence and the absent mother (Simone) and fugue (myself) in art/creative writing and critical research.
“Beginning
around 1998, my years of ‘fugue’ research (which in effect ended ten years later
when my mother passed away): was a
research into the musical meaning and psychological meanings of fugue in
writing as creative art (and began with my writing a fugue novel for my MA), researched
in many ways and applications the psychological meaning of fugue as loss of
awareness of identity. I wrote novels using this idea, and playing with the
musical aspects of fugue, as well as art theory, in interpretations of
polyphony and affect. Now it is impossible
not to see the unconscious and unintentional aspects that I wrote about as
fugal, were reflexively, performatively, writing my own unconsciousness and
family trauma.
The
loss of awareness of identity that I wrote of was my own, and of all the other countless
thousands of people who, like us, had been “white lied” to or denied knowledge
of their families, heritage and relatives.” (Skilbeck, 2012).
The MIRCI research centre hosts an annual
conference. It publishes a quarterly journal, the Journal of the Motherhood
Initiative (JMI), it is also home
to Demeter Press, the world's first feminist motherhood studies press, there
was a publisher stand of latest journals, books and the back lists.
The opportunity to attend the conference
supported my research, which has benefited from this exposure and public scholarly
communication, and provided much food for thought for my ongoing research in
this interdisciplinary field.
© Copyright Ruth Skilbeck, 22/9/2012
© Copyright Ruth Skilbeck, 22/9/2012
Afterword
My autoenthnographic research article with my digital photographs, based on my conference presentation, ‘Remembering Australia’s Forgotten Mothers: Reclaiming Lost Identity in Colonial History’ is accepted for publication in Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, Issue 3.2 2012 - Motherhood, Activism, Agency.
http://www.motherhoodinitiative.org/Historyconferenceprogram.pdf.