Gendered signs of the sacred : contested images of the mother in psychoanalysis, feminism, and Hindu myth
This thesis engages a multi-disciplinary theoretical approach to identifying, analysing, and interpreting discourse relating to the feminine and the maternal found at the intersection of psychoanalysis, feminism, and religion. The study explores embodiment, gender, and the sacred as expressed in symbolic representations of the mother and the institution of motherhood in patriarchy. I have therefore drawn on Freudian and post-Freudian theories, gender analysis, feminist critical analysis, and classical Hindu goddess myth to discern ways in which sacred images of the mother serve to reinforce the oppression of women on the one hand and can be transformed to provide empowering symbols for women's lived reality on the other. Theory of sacred space is also employed, particularly with regard to the human production of the sacred through the contested politics of sacred space.
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