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In-betweenness: being mother,academic and artistFleur Summersa & Angela Clarkeb

a Sculpture, Sound and Spatial Practice, School of Art, RMITUniversity, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australiab College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University, GPO Box2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001,AustraliaPublished online: 04 Sep 2015.

To cite this article: Fleur Summers & Angela Clarke (2015): In-betweenness: being mother,academic and artist, Journal of Family Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13229400.2015.1058846

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13229400.2015.1058846

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In-betweenness: being mother, academic and artist

Fleur Summersa* and Angela Clarkeb

aSculpture, Sound and Spatial Practice, School of Art, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476,Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia; bCollege of Design and Social Context, RMIT University,GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia

(Received 10 February 2015; accepted 1 June 2015)

In-betweenness is related to liminality, is intermediary, interstitial, transitionaland hybrid and has been theorised in anthropology as a culturally recognisedliminal state that occurs during rites of passage or transition. In this paper, thefocus on liminal states facilitates an understanding of transversal movementsbetween being mothers, academics and artists and recognizes the in-betweennessof family and professional life and their influences upon one another. Whilstprivileging the in-between makes for a rich and creative life for women, this lifecomes at a cost within the hierarchical structures of our public and educationalinstitutions. This paper explores ways to develop collegial and personalconnections that are particularly empowering for female academics. It uncovershow together we can inhabit ambiguous, disruptive and playful states and thenreintegrate into established socio-political structures with a renewed andcompelling sense of purpose.

Keywords: in-betweenness; mother; academic; artist; liminality

Introduction

In this paper we uncover and collaboratively make meaning of the spaces betweenbeing mothers, academics and creative practitioners. Through our collegial practicein a small art school in a large Australian university, we have forged a professionalfriendship that creates an opening for genuine dialogue concerning the complexitiesof family and professional life and their influence upon one another. In this dialogicalmeeting space we embrace ambiguity, welcome paradox and normalize the co-existence of opposites. We take inspiration from French philosophers Deleuze andGuattari (1980/1987), who use the botanical rhizome as a metaphor for conceptualiz-ing multiplicities. The rhizome, from a philosophical viewpoint, allows for multiple,non-hierarchical entry and exit points. Deleuze and Guattari note that ‘a rhizomehas no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, inter-mezzo’ (p. 25). Using these ideas we have begun to investigate the notion of in-betweenness and the non-hierarchical. We explore the in-betweenness of the manyroles we play and thus shift our focus to the middle of things. As Deleuze andGuattari write:

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

*Corresponding author. Email: fleur.summers@rmit.edu.au

Journal of Family Studies, 2015http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13229400.2015.1058846

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The middle is by no means an average; on the contrary, it is where things pick up speed.Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the otherand back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps oneand the other away, a stream without beginning or end that undermines its banks andpicks up speed in the middle. (p. 25)

We have come to consider mothering, academia and creative practice as multi-dimen-sional, networked and connective; we do not go from one thing to another but maketransversal movements between our aspirations, expectations and desires that overlay,underlay, integrate and incorporate multiplicities. Following feminist philosopherLuce Irigaray (1984/1993), we recognize that ‘desire occupies or designates the placeof the interval between’: that desire itself defies a permanent definition because it isconstantly being renegotiated (pp. 7–8). Desire is not linked to a fantasy that strivesfor an impossible or unattainable object but desire is thought of in the Deleuziansense as linked to what it produces, what it connects with in relationship to otherhuman or non-human bodies, things and flows of energies. In our lives, these energiesrelate to a range of interconnected activities including academic reading, helping achild with homework, capturing a line of poetry/riff of music or intuitively workingin the sculpture studio and preparing the evening meal. There are times when beingin the middle becomes complicated, such as when a child is sick, the week before a per-formance, exhibition or the teaching semester, but even in these fast-moving assem-blages the directional pull remains transversal. Despite the intensity, children stillneed to be loved, fed and cared for, houses organized, partners considered and shop-ping done.

Whilst philosophers have helped us conceptualize the in-betweenness of our experi-ence, we have also used our time together to look more carefully at the processes ofother artists and artist/mothers and have drawn inspiration from their experiencestoo. Artists have a ready-made understanding of transversal movements. In manycases it is embedded in the very act of making artistic works. For example, filmmakerBill Shaffer discusses the notion of the in-between in animation, saying

fated to intermediacy, the animated figure finds itself always ‘opened’ up to the next inter-val by the same force that would ‘close’ it in relation to the preceding interval: the force ofa movement to which its own life is immanent. (Schaffer, 2005, p. 208)

In animation, drawings known as ‘in-betweens’ are situated between the main frames.Developing these drawings is called in-betweening or tweening and helps to create theillusion of motion that exists to give the appearance that the first image evolvessmoothly into the second image. Like the forming and dissolving animated figure,we find ourselves always in process, opening up to different states of being and dissol-ving into others and always giving the appearance of smoothly evolving from one roleinto the next.

This paper will thus make fluid movements between philosophy, artist accountsand the dialogical vignettes that have emerged from our meetings. In doing so weuncover the ways we have made collegial and personal connections that are particu-larly empowering for women. These shared dialogues, multiple narratives and the con-stantly shifting layered states of our interwoven relationships are reflected in thestructure of this paper, which attempts to bring together and express the polyvalenceand indeterminateness of our experiences as mothers, academics and artists.

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Theorizing in-betweenness

In-betweenness is related to liminality, is intermediary, interstitial, transitional, hybridand fluid. It captures the permeable nature of experience, challenges the concept ofbounded roles and rejects the binary of work and home. In-betweenness shines alight on transitional spaces where a multiplicity of roles are negotiated and assimilated.Theorizing in-betweenness provides us with ongoing support for academic research,artistic practice and mothering.

But what is in-betweenness? In the field of anthropology in-betweenness has beentheorized as a culturally recognized liminal state that occurs during rites of passage ortransition. These rites, according to van Gennep (1960), accompany changes in place,state, social position and age. Following van Gennep, Turner (1969) claims liminalentities are those who are ‘neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the pos-itions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial’ (p. 359). In-betweenness dissolves order and ‘creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables newinstitutions and customs to become established’ (Szakolczai, 2009, p. 141). It involvescrossing thresholds or borders, displacement, dealing with uncertainty and restrictionand celebrating difference.

In traversing the roles and responsibilities of motherhood, academia and artist wenow think of ourselves as liminal entities that are between the positions assigned to us.We are in a constant state of transition that has the qualities of a rite of passage. Asmothers, we quickly come to experience and understand the transitional nature ofour relationships. Through the liminality of pregnancy and birth and the constantchanges of child rearing, we experience transformation and in-betweenness continu-ally. Through our own artistic practices, our experiences as mothers and our relation-ships to art, music, film and philosophy we find ourselves as mediators in a complexterrain and value the way we connect with and through one another’s experiences.Recognizing and sharing in-betweenness as a state in which new paradigms can bedeveloped allows us to create a sense of belonging and understanding that goesbeyond whether our children are sleeping through the night or being bullied at school.

Theorizing in-betweenness helps give voice to what Luce Irigaray (1984/1993) callsthe ‘right to the “for itself” of the spirit’ (p. 117). Like Irigaray, we recognize that ‘thefemale imaginary’ (p. 28) is repressed and that woman ‘accedes to generality throughher husband and her child but only at the price of her singularity’ (p. 117). By attend-ing to in-betweenness we reclaim our singularity and uncover ways of speaking andactioning woman’s desire outside of androcentric culture. We discover, as Irigaraynotes, that woman’s desire is not ‘expected to speak the same language as man’s;woman’s desire has doubtless been submerged by the logic that has dominated theWest since the time of the Greeks’ (Irigaray, 1977/1985, p. 25). This allows us to recog-nize the validity of the ideas of women, mothers and those of different experiences whofind themselves within the walls of traditional institutions such as the university, thefamily and the gallery.

But what is this desire; this language? What knowledge does it uncover and how dowe access and communicate it? Our approach is to explore, understand and infiltratethese systems and enact positive change from within rather than advocating for aviolent revolution that replaces one dominant hierarchy with another. Our revolutionis far more rhizomatic and inclusive and much more about co-existence. We recognize,too, ‘knowledges, like all other forms of social production, are at least partially effects

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of the sexualised positioning of their producers and users; knowledges must themselvesbe acknowledged as sexually determinate, limited, finite’ (Grosz, 1994, p. 20). Unco-vering woman’s desire; forging new languages, new knowledges is a delicate businessthat at first requires an understanding of the consequences for women of the hierarch-ical structures within which we are situated.

Hierarchical structures

For those of us wanting to forge an academic career and an artistic practice as well asraise a family, there is a threefold negotiation. Making the choice to have childrendoes have consequences from a career perspective. We both stayed connected to theworkforce whilst our children were young, either part-time working or as postgraduatestudents, or both. The juggling between these three roles has meant that we have beenliving in-between for over a decade. Whilst we acknowledge that these choices are pri-vileges of the educated, we argue that within our context they have had a significanteffect on how our contributions are valued and how our career trajectories have thusbeen compromised. Despite the fact that Australia has had equal opportunity and affir-mative action legislation since the mid-1980s, the percentage of women in senior man-agement roles remains low.A recent study revealed that womenmake up 30%ofDeans,40% of Pro Vice Chancellors, 36% of Deputy Vice Chancellors and 18% of Vice Chan-cellors in Australian universities (White, Carvalho, & Riordan, 2011).

These sobering statistics are palpably evident in our local workplace environment.We watch our male colleagues move through the hierarchical positions of academiaand notice how there has simply not been enough time for us within the workforceto run a parallel course. Now, in our forties, despite having partially completedPhDs, substantial educational leadership experience and a decent number of annualresearch publications, we are unable to apply for promotion until our PhDs are com-pleted or we bring in large amounts of research dollars. In our workplace, a smallschool of art in a large urban university, there is an almost even split of male andfemale academic staff. There are 32 leadership positions in this school (professors, pro-gramme managers, subject co-ordinators) but only eight women, at the time of writingthis paper, hold these positions. Interestingly this is in an environment where thefemale student cohort vastly outweighs the male (68% female and 32% male). Webegin to wonder about the role models we are creating for young women and recognizethat we are embedded in a society that is still deeply resistant to change. After Irigaray(1984/1993), we also wonder if ‘a worldwide erosion of the gains won in women’sstruggles occurred because of the failure to lay foundations different from those onwhich the world of men is constructed’ (Irigaray, 1984/1993, p. 6).

Being absorbed in the hierarchical system of academia, the choices we have madeabout family and work impact upon how we are perceived in the workforce. Part-timework means we are consulted less and opportunities for advancement are missed. Co-workers who are full-time are often irritated by our lack of availability, leaving usfeeling sidelined and disempowered. We find ourselves taking on more responsibilitythan required by our job descriptions just to keep the workplace running smoothlyand to prove ourselves. And yet we are still required to produce research outputsthrough publication and exhibitions. Even if we want to work full-time, which theincreasing ages of our children now allows for, the jobs are simply not there despiteall the commitment shown and the unpaid hours worked.

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On the other hand, the independence of academia has given us the flexibility tovalue in-betweenness as a pedagogical practice. Teaching in creative practice isoften a very personal endeavour. In an art school our aim is to teach our studentshow to develop their own critically led artistic process. There is no recipe for thisand it involves a deep understanding of culture, the development of strong interperso-nal skills, insight and give and take on both sides. These practices undoubtedly feedinto our own practices – as Phyllida Barlow says, ‘teaching reciprocates my activitiesas an artist, as does my family’ (as cited in Reardon andMollin, 2009, p. 43). Teachingcreative practice is often about nurturing abilities and ideas and is often very muchembodied, as making images and objects uses the body. The nature of this interperso-nal work means that boundaries often need to be negotiated and at times dissolved.

Dissolving boundaries

The professional friendship we describe in this paper has developed over a five-yearperiod and operates in spite of (perhaps because of) the highly structured andovertly hierarchical systems within which we exist. Over that time, formal and infor-mal collaborative working methods have emerged. We meet regularly, either at workor at one of our homes, at least once a month, more often when we are on a deadline.To help focus our energies, what we do together is write with a view to publicationthrough conferences and journals, but our writing is playful and tangential. LikeDeleuze and Guattari (1980/1987), writing for us has ‘nothing to do with signifying.It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come’ (p. 5). Theprocess is messy and we often lose ourselves in tangential concepts and ideas. Whatremains constant is a shared trust in the rhizomatic process itself; a process that weknow will eventually uncover something of use. We do not seek perfection in formbut take a keen interest in the things that disrupt, disturb and alter that which isalready known. This writing process allows our ideas to emerge and developbecause we are thinking through making which we recognize requires the same con-ditions for making artworks: curiosity, playfulness and non-judgemental approachesto mistakes and error. Sometimes we formalize our sessions by audio recording andtranscribing a conversation. Other times we set ourselves a writing task and use ourtime together to silently write in one another’s company. There is always a shareddigital document in use. This operates as a repository for our musings, reflections, con-templations and afterthoughts in-between our sessions.

Our dialogical sessions provide a safe place to unearth our imperfect offerings; tocollapse the divisions between our roles and normalize our seemingly chaotic lives.By doing this, a range of ideas, concerns and desires have surfaced. As PhD candidates,weusually start with a rambling exchange that tries tomake sense of somephilosophicalconcept and how it relates to our creative work.We share what we are currently readingand at times go looking for material to support the ideas that have emerged in one ofoursessions.Weboth have an abiding interest in embodiment and the studyof lived, corpor-eal experience. Using contemporary notions of embodiment, we think of bodies not asdualistic objects, vessels or conduits as it is so often depicted in western philosophy butas integrated fields in which ‘certain organs and abilities come to prominence whileothers recede’ (Leder, 1990, p. 24). Thiswayof thinking has also led us to consider embo-died responses and feelings or intensities that cannot be defined, that are felt but notcomprehensible and defy dominant paradigms of experience.

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These slippery ideas of bodily intensities and responses that defy meaning and cog-nition have been theorized philosophically by affect theory. It is this space between dis-course and emotion that allows intensities to ‘pass body to body (human, nonhuman,part-body, and otherwise), in those resonances that circulate between, and sometimesstick to bodies and worlds, and in the very passages or variations between these inten-sities or resonances themselves’ (Gregg & Seigworth, 2010, p. 1). Understanding affectallows us to comprehend our in-betweenness and how our embodied responses areconstantly changing as we negotiate the demands of our lives. Thinking aboutbodily intensities below the threshold of conscious awareness and meaning can alsogive greater depth to our relationships. Elizabeth Grosz sees affect as a reminderthat ‘we have forgotten the nature, the ontology of the body, the conditions underwhich bodies are acculturated, psychologized, given identity, historical location, andagency’ (Grosz, 2005, p. 2). To dissolve boundaries and to allow dialogue to flowalong different directions for us involves leaving the institution and returning to thedomestic, embodied nature of meeting around the kitchen table.

Meeting, writing and sharing ideas at the kitchen table shifts our professionalrelationship irrevocably into a personal one. By sharing a bowl of soup, meeting thefamily and spreading our work over the central space in one of our homes, we nego-tiate a different, yet familiar type of embodiment. We notice how many different typesof transactions happen at our respective kitchen tables and how there are no bound-aries between those activities. We notice too that the lack of boundaries mean our liveson the whole are being enacted in the spaces between events, responsibilities, desiresand relationships.

Whilst the kitchen table, with its defined borders and clarity of purpose, is a con-crete space where very specific things happen, it is also a transformative space wherethe fuzzy edges of memory permeate; it is a field where pasts and futures can co-exist.When we eventually clear the table and make time for us to work there is some ritualthat is playing itself out in a kind of pre-reflective way. We cannot hold our mindssteady on the task of writing because the kitchen table nudges memory and future cir-cumstance into conversation. Jean Kittson talks about how the kitchen table iscommon ground for family events throughout the generations, ‘such as the gentletouch of all the mothers of all the generations bathing all their babies in tubs on ablanket on the table (where else?)’ (as cited in Power, 2008, pp. 125–127). We bothhave a visceral response to Kittson’s words, remembering how we too had bathedour babies on the kitchen table in a white plastic tub. These parallel and subsequentlyshared experiences somehow tap us into the timelines of one another’s lives. Strangelyboth our eldest children are the same age and share the same name. So there is a deeperconnection forged as we collectively imagine both our sons being bathed at the sametime on our respective kitchen tables completely unbeknown to one another and weimagine possible connections and shared futures.

The kitchen table is also a place for the present; for creativity. Finding ourselves athome needing to write, create, provide a never-ending supply of meals, and offering ahelping handwith homework tasks means that the central location of the kitchen tableprovides a surface upon which these activities can occur simultaneously. Artists oftenturn their sensibilities to that which is immediately before them. So when artist/mothers are at home for extended periods of time it is no accident that the kitchentable becomes a place for action. For example, artist Nane Jordan, rather than giveup her artistic practice, turns her attention toward her daughters at the breakfast

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table wearing masks and creates a series of photographic works. Jordan (2012) says,‘since becoming a mother, and especially in the context of staying at home to carefor my young daughters, I now closely inhabit the immediate locale of our apartmentspace’ and have started ‘using my camera to capture everyday life’ (p. 235). Jordanreveals how she simultaneously teaches her children the value of art making andplay and provides creative nourishment for her own artistic practice: ‘we play withthem (the masks) so that we might pretend something else, becoming more of whowe are and are not, in one instance’ (p. 236). Jordan is inhabiting an in-betweenspace that allows her children and her artistic practice to playfully flourish.

Theorizing in-betweenness helps us yield to the fluid exchange of roles, responsibil-ities and multiplicity of interactions and to understand their importance. Conse-quently every person, every context has the potential to teach us something –

especially the playfulness of our children.

Playing in-between

Through our children, we learn to re-engage with our own childhood in away that canbe both joyful and confronting. As our children transition through childhood andexperience the first day of school, making new friends, winning a prize, losing acomfort toy, fighting with siblings or being left out, we are somehow transportedback to the emotional intensity of those moments in our own lives. Melanie Kleinexperienced in child analysis, ‘a capacity for insight which is often far greater thanadults’ (Klein, 1955, p. 233). Our children sometimes cope better than us. Watchingthem understand themselves and communicate through open-ended play, as Kleindid, is pivotal as we negotiate family life. The following dialogue, recorded duringone of our sessions, illustrates how we share this experience:

A: Being flexible, open, observant, malleable, imaginative, playful and being prepared totake risks and make mistakes are actually things our children teach us…F: And they constantly learn and process ideas about themselves and the world throughmaking, whether it’s drawing or lego. Stella drew a monster (Figure 1) that sometimestransforms and becomes, as she said, ‘dehydrated’. In fact it looks really angry. After con-sidering whether or not I needed to take her to the child psychologist, I realized I felt justlike that too.A: I love that they make complex things simple…Declan did this self-portrait (Figure 2)in kinder that is a blue watery wash almost cloud-like but in a very loose human form andthen in black ink he has drawn disembodied facial features, arms and legs, nothing else…it makes the borders between skin and environment seem fluid and ethereal. I keep it onmy desk to remind me of stuff I’m interested in…F:What’s striking about the work that kids produce at kinder is that it is all about being inthe moment. Focusing on process and being in-between things or in the middle of anexperience is at the core and an important way to learn about the world throughmaking and materials. Ultimately it’s about play… (Audio recording of dialogue,November, 2013)

Play is an activity not only relegated to the realms of childhood. PsychoanalystDonald Winnicott placed great value on ‘playing’. His understanding of playingreferred not just to children but also to adults and to their play through sport,theatre, art, humour and friendships. He theorized that ‘it is in playing and only inplaying that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole

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personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self ’ (Win-nicott, 1971, p. 73).

The ability to play, according to author and psychiatrist Stuart Brown is ‘criticalnot only to being happy, but also to sustaining social relationships and being a crea-tive, innovative person’ (Brown and Vaughan, 2009, p. 6). What makes something‘play’ is that the focus is on the actual experience rather than accomplishing a goaland it is often fun, pleasurable and purposeless (Brown and Vaughan, 2009, p. 6).Open-ended play also allows for and accommodates failure, as it is inherently an itera-tive process. This is an important idea in creative practice. British artist and retiredacademic, Phylidda Barlow views ‘failure as a very positive thing, not as a negativething. I see it as a whole process towards finding out about something. That if some-thing doesn’t work it carries an enormous amount of information with it’ (as cited inReardon & Mollin, 2009, p. 43). Play and process can be very important for artists ofall kinds. Through play the work can progress to a point of resolution even if thisinvolves experiencing a number of dead ends along the way.

Despite the advantages of play, sometimes making work and spending time withchildren can be a struggle and there are times when nothing works. Artist KateGilmore captures these feelings in her performances in which notions of play andchance are integral. She is more interested in physical movement than making sculp-ture and focuses on ‘my humour, my messiness, my disasters’ (as cited in Heartneyet al., 2013, p. 129). In her performance work, Through the Claw (2011), fivewomen in yellow dresses attack a huge cube of wet clay (3400 kg), grabbing at itand flinging it around a constructed room for three hours. The clay is reduced,spread and smeared around the space and the actions of the performers seem

Figure 1. Stella’s monster (courtesy of the artist).

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aggressive and angry. It looks like the ‘shit has hit the fan’ and any semblance of orderhas been destroyed (Figure 3). Not only does it clearly represent some of the physicaldomestic struggles we experience but it also attacks the potentially contained

Figure 2. Declan’s self-portrait (courtesy of the artist).

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masculine minimalist form of the cube through defiant and strong gestural movement.The work also speaks strongly of abjection and the abhorrence of bodily waste.However, as Julia Kristeva wrote in the Powers of Horror, it is not just the ‘lack ofcleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order.What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, thecomposite’ (Kristeva, 1982, p. 4). And as women and mothers, we regularly experiencethe flow of bodily fluid and the disruption of bodily ‘order’. As mothers, we experiencethe transitional borders of pregnancy, the body breaking open during childbirth andthe connection of our newborns to us both physically and psychologically. Theabject and its inherent lack of borders becomes normalized through our experiencesas parents through the flows of shit, vomit, blood, snot and phlegm.

What matters most

When pushed to say ‘what is most important to her: being a mother or being an artist?’during an artist’s talk, Phyllida Barlow, who has five adult children, says, ‘I would justhave to say being a mother’. She notes ‘there was this recoiling in horror from the audi-ence that one could actually say that – prioritise being a mother over being an artist’(Reardon & Mollin, 2009, p. 44). However, in the end Barlow notes that ‘it isn’t abouta choice, the two are actually reciprocal’ (p. 44). This reciprocity is lifelong; once amother always amother and same too for being an artist/researcher. JocelynMoorhousenotes that artistic projects are ‘like the forgotten child, the one I have to shove to the side,saying “You’re not flesh and blood, so you’re just going to have to wait”. But it still callsme. I always have the need to create something’ (as cited in Power, 2008, p. 284).

The silent and unseen development and nurturing of a child in utero and beyond inmany ways mirrors the creative process of artistic practice. Like creative practice,

Figure 3. Kate Gilmore Through the Claw 2011 (C-print, 30 × 40 inches, edition of 10). Cour-tesy David Castillo Gallery.

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mothering has an inbuilt tension; a love/hate dynamic that can be incredibly demand-ing on the physical and emotional body. As US poet Adrienne Rich honestly reveals:

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is thesuffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in myfeelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance. (Rich,1986, p. 1. Original work published 1976)

Recognizing the in-between has helped us bring to the surface and critically analysethe expectations of the roles we play (imposed at both social and personal levels)and to notice how our response to these expectations can be either limiting or expan-sive. As Rich (1986) later says, ‘only the willingness to share private and sometimespainful experience can enable women to create a collective description of the worldwhich will be truly ours’ (p. 16).

As feminists we feel torn between our work and our children and have felt the urgeto give in completely to motherhood. Kelly J. Baker’s thoughts on this topic resonate:

True, juggling an academic career and a family is hard, especially in the early years. Andthose of us who become mothers in academia often find ourselves negotiating the highcultural expectations of ‘serious’ scholar and ‘good’ mother, roles that don’t coincideneatly. Supposedly, serious scholars put career and research first, while good mothersprioritize family above all else. Mother-scholars, then, are caught in a bind of conflictingexpectations. Is it any wonder so many of us leave? (Baker, 2014)

However, we are also very aware of the importance of showing our children thatwomen, and mothers in particular, have agency. This was brought into sharp relieffor musician Clare Bowditch when she received an Arts Victoria grant to recordwhat became her first album and a week later discovered she was pregnant. Shechooses to continue with the grant and the pregnancy and, as she puts it,

becoming pregnant really put the wind in my sails and forcedme to live the creative life I’dalways suspected I would be happiest living. The thought of becoming a mother presentedme with a strong ‘now or never’ kind of feeling. What sort of example would I be settingfor my children if I didn’t try? These were the kind of thoughts that fuelled me in thoseearly days. In a way you could say that terror was my inspiration; the terror of livingwith myself were I to never try. (Power, 2008, p. 40)

We know we need more; that motherhood is not enough. We need the ability to beindependent – financially and creatively. We recognize however that our creativeendeavours include the embodied act of child bearing/rearing as well as making/writing things. Attending to both is the only way we can uncover our singularity.Finding a dialogical space for in-betweenness has helped us in personal and pro-fessional contexts because this process has made us better able to articulate thethings we value and engage in actions that pursue the kind of worldwewant to inhabit.

Conclusion

The spaces between academia, mothering and creative practice provide awellspring ofhidden and unformed ideas for change that have their own gestation period. Like

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pregnancy, they cannot be hurried along by any mental process, conference deadlineor desire for instant gratification. We argue that living in-between makes for a rich andcreative life but this life comes at a cost in the overly hierarchical structures of oursociety.

Turning our attention to and sharing our playful and malleable sensibilities allowsfor the kind of collegial connection with unknown potential because it is process ratherthan outcomes driven. This is anathema to the increasingly corporatized public andeducational institutions to which we belong. In the rhizomatic in-between we are incu-bating something new, something that is yet unformed. By establishing new customs ofprofessional exchange we are engaged in a playful cultural act that in Adrienne Rich’s(1986) words is ‘of woman born’.We aremoving beyond ‘the individualistic telling withno place to go’ and turning towards a ‘collective movement to empower women’ (p. x).

We have come to think of ourselves as liminal entities in a constant state of in-betweenness. By recognizing this in-between state as a rite of passage we create oppor-tunities to separate from the hierarchical structures of groups to which we belong,inhabit ambiguous, disruptive and playful states and then reintegrate into stablesocio-political structures with a renewed sense of purpose as agents for change. Wedo not, however, claim this in-between state as uniquely female or inherently feminine.Many male colleagues, friends and companions share similar sensibilities. Thus,taking our lead from Irigaray (1984/1993), our task now is to ‘go on living and creatingworlds’ but recognizing that this can only be accomplished ‘through the combinedefforts of the two halves of the world: the masculine and the feminine’ (p. 127).

Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Fleur Summers http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6250-2087Angela Clarke http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2712-8827

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