Maternity in the Post-Apocalypse: Novelistic Re-visions of Dystopian Motherhood

Renae L. Mitchell

doi:10.5771/9781793605566

Summary

Maternity in the Post-Apocalypse: Novelistic Revisions of Dystopian Motherhood deconstructs the ways in which women novelists have reconceived the post-apocalyptic genre in recent decades through narratives centered on heroic maternal characters. These writers have placed midwives, pregnant women, and mothers at the forefront of their novels, transforming them from the hapless victims of male oppressors to protagonists who are instrumental in transforming the post-apocalyptic social landscape from one that attempts to reconstruct a patriarchal past to one that safeguards, validates, and even lauds maternity as a form of empowerment. In a novelistic future devastated landscape in which human civilizations are shattered and waver at the brink of extinction, women who embody facets of maternity are taking the reins of rebuilding human societies by overturning patriarchal assumptions of femininity, reclaiming intersectional autonomy, and (re)visioning the possibilities for a declining anthropocene.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2021
Copyright Year: 2021
ISBN-Print: 978-1-7936-0555-9
ISBN-Online: 978-1-7936-0556-6
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 154
Product Type: Monograph

1. Dedication No access
2. Contents No access
1. Intersectionality No access
2. Overturning the Paternal Symbolic No access
3. Maternal Post-Catastrophe Futures No access
4. Note No access
1. Motherhood in Plurality No access
2. Maternity in Decline No access
3. Maternal Agency Redefined No access
4. Fathers Defectum and Mothers Invictus No access
5. Sera No access
6. Virginia, Sweetie, Mary, and Marian Subversion No access
7. Mother Is the New Authoritarian in Town No access
8. Amniotic Transition into the Post-Apocalypse No access
9. Eschatological Indigeneity No access
10. Notes No access
1. Gender Identity and the Inherently Intersectional No access
2. Silent Mother and the Still, Still Born No access
3. The Colony and Collapse of Patriarchal Maternity No access
4. Matriarchal Law and a New Hive Mentality No access
5. Birth in the Post-apocalyptic Æther No access
6. Notes No access
1. Intersectional Single Motherhood No access
2. Supernatural Caribbean Maternal Legacy No access
3. Magical Women and the Threat to Patriarchal Order No access
4. Conclusion No access
5. Notes No access
1. Countergenealogies and Religious Literacy as the Road to a Maternal Future No access
2. Mothers, Daughters, and (Re)Writing the New Order No access
3. Maternal Afrofuturism No access
4. Conclusion No access
Conclusion No access Pages 139 - 142
Afterword No access Pages 143 - 144
Works Cited No access Pages 145 - 150
Index No access Pages 151 - 152
About the Author No access Pages 153 - 154