Poetics of Performing: Becoming a Mother

In this article, I part from the argument developed by Valsiner in a text on pathways to development and education (Valsiner, 2008): he claims we need to move from the static ontology of being—which asks “what is X?” to the epistemology of becoming—which asks “what is X becoming.” He then asks the consequent question: how to do empirical work on that new key? How to research on a crucial feature of human development—the self-reflexive intentional relating with the anticipated future? This article is an attempt to develop the epistemology of becoming on an empirical level, by analyzing my self-writings from the period I became a mother. I show that becoming a mother is a developmental process that happens through time and through the performing of daily activities such as nursing, bathing the baby and so on. In order to go beyond the study of the epistemology of becoming, I propose the poetics of performing.