Reading Storylines of Religious Motherhood with Ethics of Joy

Abstract

In this article the storylines of a religious mother are read with Rosi Braidotti’s formulation of joyful and affirmative ethics. This ethics sets these storylines in motion and illuminates the changes that occur concerning devotion, resistance, and resilience in the face of the expectations of religious motherhood. This diffractive reading makes explicit the changing affects functioning in non-normative narratives and the compound and polyvocal ethics of becoming concerning (religious) motherhood, reproduction, and sustenance in these troubling times—times which compel us to live within compassionate ethics. The ethics of joy brings forward affective elements by allowing also the negative affects entangled in pain and trauma to be recognised as resistance. Besides assisting in reading the storylines for possible breaks, turns, and changes, diffractive reading makes often-neglected tacit elements matter. The forces fuelling the movement in the storylines bring forth equally symmetries, disparities, and changes, and the complex but also complementary relation of resilience and resistance as a part of feminist genealogies of affect.