Beside her self: a coffin text

Date

2021-07-22

Authors

Michalofsky, Jessica

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Abstract

I did not purposely set down to write this work but was compelled by a painful sense of what I should not do. What I should not write. To protect the privacy and autonomy of individuals, to avoid creating harm, and to resist, however unsuccessfully, essentializing either “mothers” or “addiction,” this work enacts a radical besideness, where one subject performs the verb of a second subject, where one subject enlist the aid of other subjects. In the aim of both producing and defying narrative structures that seem to fasten a person to their identity, this collaborative, intertextual project attempts to tell a story, both in what is re-told and in what is not-told. It invokes infelicitous performances as a way of talking back while walking forward.

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Keywords

Ethical representation, Memoir, Mothering, Addiction, Narrative, Intertextuality

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