Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

Transitioning into motherhood is a process of becoming (Boyer, 2018). This text is an autoethnographic exploration of my own spatial experiences of the liminal space of early motherhood. It serves as an introductory phase at the beginning of my PhD-project that focuses on cross-border displaced mothers’ endeavours to make homes in Cape Town, South Africa. As an outsider to this main research topic, the aim of the initial self-study is to critically reflect on my own experience and reveal preconceived ideas and biases towards the group of people I will be working with. As a way to negotiate the ethical concerns regarding the power dynamics, representation and othering in the main research project, the intention is to reveal my personal embeddedness within the larger research project and establish an intersectional dialogue between myself as the embodied researcher and the lived experiences of participants. With this intent I experiment with architectural drawing techniques to analyse photos of the material traces of my personal experiences of transitioning into motherhood. These visual explorations are juxtaposed with existing literature on cross-border displaced mothers, as well as my critical reflections on my preconceived ideas and biases towards this group of people. Through this method I establish the spatial experience of motherhood as a continuous process of making and remaking place, while emphasising the complexities of doing research as an outsider.