No excuses can hide the criminal actions of a Nazi fellow-traveller in this admirably objective documentary, suggests MARTIN HALL
Motherlode
HENRY BELL admires a bold exploration of the material reality and political representations of mothering in Britain
HEROINE: Veteran campaigner Sarah Hipperson, who spent much of the 1980s at the Greenham Common women's peace camp. The site had a continuous women's peace protest from 1981 until the Cruise missiles were removed in 1991. Sarah Hipperson remained an active campaigner and spent most of August 1997 in prison for cutting the fence at Aldermaston
PAUL DONOVAN relishes a fascinating exploration of the leading lights of the Labour right in the 1970s
BEN LUNN alerts us to the creeping return of philanthropy and private patronage, and suggests alternative paths to explore
A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis
MIK SABIERS savours the first headline solo show of the stalwart of Brighton’s indie-punk outfit Blood Red Shoes
New releases reviewed by IAN SINCLAIR
STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood
Helen Charman, Allen Lane, £30
IN the 1980s The Sisterhood of Black Single Mothers used the word “motherful” rather than “fatherless” to describe their families. Why describe something by a character it neither has nor lacks?
In her epic political history of motherhood, Mother State, Helen Charman goes further and asks if we can’t understand the world to be “babyful” and use the demands of care to build a universal solidarity rejecting the atomisation that is thrust upon us by both the nuclear family and the neoliberal state.
Charman’s book makes a claim for mothering as a political action, and motherhood as a political state that challenges the narratives of competition and othering that permeate our politics and our world. To mother and to be mothered are, for Charman, potentially universal disrupters of the status quo that can reveal oppressions and combat alienation.
Similar stories
From the ‘motherhood pay penalty’ to low-paid care work, the Morning Star Women’s Readers and Supporters Group in Scotland has been looking at how neoliberalism has been pushing back women’s hard-won gains, writes KATE RAMSDEN
Despite the harsh conditions they face, Iranian women have proved to be vanguards in the struggle for fundamental changes in our country, says Dr AZAR SEPEHR
SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
MARY CONWAY marvels at the totally engrossing revival of a little-known classic that speaks volumes to interpersonal relationships today