Mothers

It might be an exaggeration to say that religion begins with mothers. More accurate, perhaps, would be the suggestion that birth being paradigmatic of all origins and beginnings, all creation stories, mothers might serve as the ultimate metaphorical resource to think religion (and a few other things). And then there is of course the Great Mother, the matriarchal origins of the divine, as well as the contested matriarchy at the origins of human society. We will consider as many mothers as we can, beginning with specific mothers, mothers like Eve and Hagar, and “Mother India” too. We will attend to Mary, Mother of God, and we will consider matricide and maternal infanticide too. We will learn about the “mother tongue” and African matriarchy. Throughout we will explore the mother and the maternal as religious and theoretical questions — with a little help from psychoanalysis’ mothers.