Between Abjection and Performativity: Rethinking the Maternal through Kristeva and Butler

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

PhD Candidate, Institute of Philosophy, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland

Abstract

Abstract

This paper discusses how Julia Kristeva theorizes motherhood as a contradictory site of simultaneous abjection and production, where semiotic rhythms and symbolic law are in constant conflict. Drawing primarily on Powers of Horror (1982) and Stabat Mater (1985), the paper traces the workings of the maternal body as the unstable source of subjectivity and signification. By contrast, in Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter (1993), Judith Butler demonstrates that the invocation of urgency operates in different terms, reflecting a form of essentialism present in any appeal to a pre-discursive maternal space. This article argues that motherhood is neither a purely biological state nor merely a discursive effect, but rather a provisional interface between bodily affect and socially mediated normativity, where pre-discursive intensities are never outside discourse yet are not fully reducible to it. It is this wavering, unsteady meeting of language, desire, and corporeality that gives rise to meaning, subjectivity, and resistance, and which constitutes the maternal as a site of constant philosophical and political flux intimately bound up with the longstanding undecidability of the subject.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Send comment about this article
CAPTCHA Image
Journal of Philosophical Investigations

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 07 July 2026

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics