Motherhood and Possibility
This post will deal with motherhood and
possibility in light of Angela Davis’ essay “The Black Woman’s Role in the
Community of Slaves”. Through Davis, it will also try to examine the case of
motherhood in Pakistan.
Davis points out that “even in the
posture of motherhood — otherwise the occasion for hypocritical adoration — the
black woman was treated with not greater compassion and with no less severity
than her man”. This points to an interesting phenomenon: edification as a form
of reducing potential and blunting sharpness. This idea of the mother is often
used to reduce the woman to a position of sacredness, where she performs a ‘holy’
function, and thus is deemed separate from the daily working of life. However, as
Davis gestures, this edification is, in fact, a means of removing the woman from the
social function she has the potential to perform. Her task is relegated to the
ideal, while the man’s to the material. It is a form of sanitisation. We have
seen how radical figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. have been denuded of
their radical-ness by raising them to a grand height. The stature begs reverence,
yet rarely a true engagement.
Similar is the case with the woman in Pakistan.
This is a generalisation, but events lend themselves to generalisation, and it
is pertinent to the point here. The woman is the builder of the nation. The
woman is the rearer of children. The woman manages the household. And all these
are presented in a venerable light, and these attributes might in themselves be
admirable too. But there are problems with this as well. One, that by adducing
a national and cosmic consequence to the simple role of a woman in society, it
makes her prominent in the national imagination in a way that men aren’t. It
reminds me of what Fanon wished; his body made him prominent, and he wished for
it not to be the case. There is no room for an absence. The body ensures that.
Another
aspect of this is that it restricts the possibility of what a woman can be. Certain
assumptions dictate the norm of acceptability, and deviation from it is
undesirable, and sometimes violently so. The question of possibility is another thing which ties these different-but-not-so-much instances. Davis points out in the end how the role that she has identified the black woman as performing during slave society “cannot, of course, presume to represent every individual slave woman. It is rather a portrait of the potentials and possibilities inherent in the situation to which slave women were anchored.” Possibility is what holiness, or what’s made out to be holy, excludes in this case. That which is made to be on a pedestal is outside of the reach of change. The diverse ways of becoming, hailed by Lorde, Sukarno, and Cesaire among others are stifled. The body remains the only being.
Tied to this is the attitude that
Davis rightly calls hypocritical. Such images of great motherhood are usually
invoked to reify the norm – either through patriotic songs released by ISPR, or
the sermons from the pulpit. In both these cases, these ideas are webbed into
the national imagination, “to serve the ideological apparatus” as Davis puts it.
But, as can be inferred from Davis, this figure is usually invoked in these
instances, to make an idol out of the woman, an idol that’s stationary. In the
practical workings of life, this figure is usually ignored, and the woman faces
problems more pervasive than men do. In this case, it becomes a case of denying
the very specific problems she faces. The point to this idolisation is that it is
effectively used to silence the woman from full participation, making her a
showpiece of piety.
Therefore it can be said that the reification of motherhood as the prime way of being not only denies the
possibility of multiple ways of being a woman, but also serves to silence their
contribution and possibility of contribution in the matters that matter.
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