Courage of Regretful Mothers to narrate themselves in the web

discourses and the practices of freedom

Abstract

Based on Foucaultian Discursive Studies, we propose to archeogenealogically analyze self-narratives of regretful mothers who share their frustrations regarding motherhood on social media, clashing with patriarchal power in the hope of freeing themselves from social constraints that consider motherhood as a natural destiny for women and, therefore, something that should not be challenged or denied, much less hated. We bring these narratives of self – materialized on the Instagram account @maearrependida – closer to the critical restlessness of Michel Foucault in his last courses dedicated to subjectivity and truth, prioritized here as a reading and analysis grid in order to highlight the production and circulation of the statement “Regretful mothers” understood as a node in a network that interconnects, within and outside social networks, countless women who, when narrating themselves, rely on the courage of truth (parrhesia), face risks and, above all, cause virtual fractures in the device of motherhood, opening up spaces for possible self-transformations, that is, freedom.