Leaving The Mother Whitman, Kristeva, and Leaves of Grass

This book traces the pivotal role of the "mother" throughout each edition of Leaves of Grass. To limit "mother" to "biological mother" or even to "female, " however, is too restrictive. Providing means of analysis, psychoanalytic theorist Julia Kristeva broadens the definition of "mother, " with her theory of subject formation. The "mother" is no longer a biological mother but instead a psychoanalytic m/other, the primal or pre-oedipal m/ other, who looms large in the child's earliest phase of development. Kristeva's theory emphasizes patriarchy's suppression of the m/other in subject formation, a process suggested within the evolution of Leaves of Grass.