Essential Breakthroughs: Conversations about Men, Mothers and Mothering

Download or read book Essential Breakthroughs: Conversations about Men, Mothers and Mothering written by Fionna Joy Green and published by Demeter Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential Breakthroughs: Conversations About Men, Mothers, and Mothering thinks from the nexus of gender, essentialism, and care. The authors creatively blend the philosophical and the personal to collectively argue that while gender is essential to our social and theoretical definitions of care, it is dangerously co-opted into naturalized discourses, which limit particular identities and negate certain forms of care. The perspectives curated in Essential Breakthroughs illuminate how care, as a respected and productive cultural ethic, is neither inherent nor instinctual for any human, but is learned and fostered. The chapters are informed by feminist, queer, and trans politics, wielding post-structuralist methodologies of unlearning and deconstruction, while maintaining the maternal lens as a credible feminist analytical tool and not as a gender-essentialist practice.