Mothering Desire: Inhabitations, Transgressions and the New Media

Abstract

The imagination around the figures of the mother is often conflated with her associations with virtues of care, empathy, compassion and responsiveness to the family. Her desires and sexual excess are decapitated within the contours of filial, as well as other human relationships that demand obfuscation of other possible ways of being. The case of Shefali Shah, a Bollywood actor and her relationship with the roles of motherhood in various films is an interesting avenue to unpack the complexities of motherhood–its normative associations, the unbearable conundrums of inhabiting that role, and the possibilities that lie beyond strictures of the accepted forms of motherhood. Through examining her roles in several films and shows, especially by looking closely at Ankahi, the fourth segment of the limited series AjeebDaastaans(2021) and the film Darlings (2022) both released on the OTT platforms, this paper will try to understand the undoing of the hauntings of motherhood that continues to provide a framework of knowledge regarding the materialities of motherhood and forms of resistance foregrounded in the narrative of these visual texts. In addition, this paper will situate her transgressions not in terms of a common understanding of the workings of the normative upon the body of the mother and its overt refusal but seeks to unveil the potentialities of granular, quotidian, and instances from everyday life in charting the negotiations with the norms. Subsequently, the paper will discuss the role of different forms of media vis-à-vis television shows and movies in allowing discussions on the shifting contours of motherhood more expansively.