Abstract
In her text Stabat Mater, Julia Kristeva writes about the experience of motherhood. She describes this condition as lived paradox, as a moment of fragmentation and collapse of identity.
The space between I and non-I, in which a mother passes during pregnancy, Kristeva connects with a feeling of dizziness "in the face of the abyss between what was mine and what remains is already irredeemably alien". The three authors whose works are analyzed in this chapter represent different versions of the testimony of a descent into the imaginary abyss.
With the help of theoretical apparatus, drawing upon the texts of Julia Kristeva I focus on the "dark continent" of maternal experience and through analysis of the examples I try to show this territory from the inside. The analyzed works reflect the extremely embodied experience, but also venture beyond the traditional duality that confronts disembodied logos and silent passive body.
Within this concept, a non-dualistic mother turns catastrophe of her own identity in a creative act, escaping the curse of "non-speech flesh", yet retains binding to pre-symbolic language that Kristeva links to the motherhood.