The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2016, Graywolf Press; 160 pages) From The New York Times Book Review: To become a mother is to learn, among many other things, that mothers are treated as both central and peripheral to American culture. “The most important job in the world” is such a sentimental truism that even women who don’t want to have children report having to explain themselves to incredulous busybodies. Yet actual mothering is accorded little social or economic value beyond hazy reverence and pious declarations. Mothers are allowed some authority when it comes to their homes, their children and their bodies; their domain is one of domestic necessity, which is supposed to stand in mute contrast to the wider world of work, of ideas, of rationality, of free will.That, at least, is the traditional binary, though the assumptions behind it are pervasive even among those who otherwise stand in opposition to the traditional and the mainstream. In “The Argonauts,” the poet and critic Maggie Nelson recalls an art history seminar she attended with the scholars Jane Gallop and Rosalind Krauss. Gallop talked about being photographed as a mother with her infant son, wanting to suggest that motherhood had some significance beyond the “troublingly personal, anecdotal, self-concerned”; Krauss, who helped found the poststructural journal October, wanted to keep the structural divide pristine. As Nelson remembers it, the undercurrent of Krauss’s argument was that discussion of such photos was “contaminating serious academic space” and “Gallop’s maternity had rotted her mind.” Read the rest of the review here Find this title in our catalog: The Argonauts Recommended by: Brooke
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