Mother Homer Is Dead

Mother Homer Is Dead Synopsis

Hélène Cixous chronicles the last six months of her mother's life, transgressing the mother-daughter relation in the experience of dying. It was written in the immediate aftermath of the death of the writer's mother in the 103rd year of her life. Eve Cixous, née Klein, has figured centrally in her daughter's writing since the publication of Osnabrück. Since then, Cixous's work has turned in ever-tighter orbits around the relation to her mother's life as it tapers down toward death. The writer discovers a guide book for the task written in her mother's own hand, where the narrator comes to realise that she will have been midwife to her mother's death. In French, this substitutability or reversibility of birth and death is facilitated by the noun 'accouchement', childbirth or labour, but which literally says 'bedding, putting or going to bed'.