“Global Motherhood”: The Transnational Intimacies of White Femininity

Abstract

This essay examines white femininity as a transnational phenomenon. Specifially, the essay addresses the representational logics of whiteness through which contemporary white women are positioned as “global” mothers in popular culture. The larger goal of this is to illustrate how “intimate” relations of race, gender, sexuality, and colonialism are negotiated and managed in contemporary positionings of white women as “global mothers.”

Keywords:

• White femininity
• Transnational
• Modernity
• Maternity
• Adoption

Acknowledgment

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions

Notes

1. Angelina Jolie inspires international adoption (2005). Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1175428

2. http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/celebrity/Meg+Ryan-22693.htm

3. I borrow the term from Michel Foucault.

4. See Dorow (2006) for a different discussion about maternal abandonment.

5. This concept is from Adrienne Rich's essay, “Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence,” Signs, 1980, 5(4), 631–660.

6. See http://politicalticker.Blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/11/mccains-start-speaking-about-their-children

7. Cited in John McCain—2008 Presidential candidate, http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/lesbianactivism/p/JohnMcCain/htm

8. http://www.Foxnews.com/entertainment/2009/04/03/domestic-vs-international-adoption-celebrities-overlooking-american-children

9. http://www.Foxnews.com/entertainment/2009/04/03/domestic-vs-international-adoption-celebrities-overlooking-american-children

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raka Shome

Raka Shome is serving as the Inaugural Harron Family Endowed Chair of Communication at Villanova University for the Fall of 2011. Her research is in areas of transnational feminism, postcolonial studies, media and cultural studies