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image copyright © Matt Kenyon |
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‘Occidentalism, Orientalism, and the idea of a postsecular Europe.’
Friday 30 October, 2009
Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Cordula Lemke
"Occidentalist Mothers" (abstract)
Mothers have always been seen as both creators of life and as nurtures. Yet, their nurturing capacities are extended beyond the simple task of providing food. In novels as diverse as Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room, Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Zadie Smith's White Teeth or Nadeem Aslam's Maps of Lost Lovers, mothers serve as keepers of memory and traditions which they pass on with their milk. But like Plato's pharmakon, the nurturing milk might just as easily turn into poison. In a postcolonial or diaspora context, mothers are frequently depicted as adopting an occidentalist stance by which cultural heritage is defended against what is perceived as a soulless, machinelike world. In my presentation, I will look at Sebastian Barry's new novel The Secret Scripture and at how motherhood is employed in order to provide the new Irish nation with an occidentalist set of prejudice from which a new identity might arise.
