Teaching Subjectivity. Travelling Selves for Feminist ... - MailChimp

and she left the abortion clinic saying that it is my child. Her sentiments after
these experiences were that she encountered prejudice from both doctors and
midwives during her pregnancy so early in life – the contempt shown towards
her pregnancy by the professionals was consistent. The ideas concerning who
is able to be a good mother kept haunting her; they made her determined to
become involved in various parent committees when I was at kindergarten
and at school, in order to prove her ability to be a complete mom. She folded
and prepared my clothes for me every day on a chair in the living room. In
the kitchen, two pieces of freshly baked bread were prepared with spreading or
there was a warm portion of porridge with a teaspoon of butter in the middle.
She recently told me how differently she feels now as a mother who is a peer
of other parents at the school my sister (born in 1996) attends; now she is just
one amongst other parents. The year I started high school she graduated as an
educator, but before she could even begin higher education she had to attend
ground school again, finishing the last years of school (in the English system,
secondary school). We attended ground school together, though at different
locations in the city.
The ideas that one could break out of the working class and that there
even existed such social classes divided by education and wealth, were not
clear to me; nor, I think, were they clear to my mother. 6 We did these things
because we could do them; they were not outlined or listed as requirements in
the different brochures and information on studies of educational institutions.
I had later to learn, as I entered university, that there are indeed some
qualifications and requirements – ones that are not mentioned among the
formal demands addressed to prospective students. I was studying hard from
the very first day at university but I was not successful at the beginning. It took
me quite a while to understand how there could be such differences among
students in terms of their accomplishment and in terms of the amount of
attention paid to some and not to others by the teaching staff. The language
they were speaking was not a language I knew. Slowly I adapted myself to the
university language, which I paid for with the end of a relationship and of
friendships with people from my home town. I felt a gap was opening in front
of me – between family and my university. I had learnt a new language but not
how to translate this new language – I was lost in translation and classes. 7 This
6
Beverly Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture (London: Routledge, 2004).
7
See Melita Richter Malabotta’s chapter “In Search of the Third Space” in this volume for further consideration on
the loss of self in language and translation.
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