Conversations of motherhood : women's writing across traditions, Ksenia Robbe

Abstract

The devaluation of social reproductive labour has taken on unique and insidious forms through the functioning of the 'post'-apartheid political economy of South Africa. In particular, the non-racial and neoliberal ideology of the 'Rainbow Nation' and its various guises of 'freedom' render the forms and mechanisms of racialised and gendered oppression in South Africa increasingly more difficult to make sense of. In considering the reproduction of socially constructed materiality and experience in this country, the history of racial capitalism, and the enduring racialisation of inequality should be taken into account. It is against this context and backdrop that the centralisation of gendered experiences and representations of transcultural motherhoods by Ksenia Robbe in Conversations of motherhood: women's writing across traditions (2015) is particularly important to examine. The central thrust of the book is one concerned with representations and experiences of motherhood.