| Abstrakt: |
During the pandemic, a flock of chickens provided guidance I could not find in psychoanalytic theory on how to reimagine and reconfigure the Maternal to meet the demands of the largely untheorized Late Maternal period in order to protect my children's psyches and mine from disintegration in response to pandemic formlessness. In exploring the powerful encounter with the non-human that unfolded, and the grief that ensued when we parted, I consider how the choice of chickens may have been a response to a call from and to the chicken part of me, and to psychoanalysis itself, for an expanded, fractal-informed, rhizomatically-oriented, Flock-attuned, openness to connections across time and species and a deeper relationship with the earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
