Maternal Silence

In this article I argue that the project of figuring maternal subjectivity necessitates a reevaluation of the modalities of language that can bare the unique relations between subjectivity and Otherness that underlie maternal subjectivity. The first 2 sections of the essay discuss 2 alternative accounts of the relations between the child's Otherness and the mother's subjectivity, those of Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray. In the third and concluding section, I offer an account of maternal subjectivity in terms of witnessing that is committed to the child as an open future. I then argue that, as such, maternal subjectivity cannot be fully narrated.