Inappropriate objects: on gender, self, and parenthood in Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts and Krys Malcolm Belc's The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood

Reproductive ideology defaults to a cisnormative gender framework, but memoirs on parenthood by LGBTQIA+ writers reframe the taxonomy of pregnancy as a queer experience. This article will examine how the relationship between absence and intimacy in Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (2015) and Krys...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProse studies Vol. 42; no. 3; pp. 221 - 238
Main Author Galbraith, Rebekah
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 02.09.2021
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
autotheory
Gender
LGBTQ people
non-binary
queer pregnancy
sexuality
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Summary:Reproductive ideology defaults to a cisnormative gender framework, but memoirs on parenthood by LGBTQIA+ writers reframe the taxonomy of pregnancy as a queer experience. This article will examine how the relationship between absence and intimacy in Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (2015) and Krys Malcolm Belc's The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood (2021) challenges the crisis of queer self-identification against maternal symbiosis and reproductive futurism. A depression of constant flux, Nelson and Belc reformulate the pregnant body as inherently queer, acutely symptomatic site of transgression, a reshaping of self and other. Each text describes the notion of pregnancy as inherently unstable: the dualism of reproduction, where one creates content as a revolution of form-an expansion rather than a retreat.
ISSN:0144-0357
1743-9426
DOI:10.1080/01440357.2022.2146430