Abstract In 1977 Adrienne Rich wrote, ‘It is hard to write about my own mother. Whatever I do write, it is my own story I am telling’. Two years later, Michelle’s Citron’s film Daughter Rite, struggled with the same problem. It was, she later wrote, a daughter’s film, ‘incapable of imagining the mother’s story’. The difficulty of imagining and conceptualizing a specifically maternal subject is an issue that has continued to preoccupy feminist scholarship, becoming in the past ten years once more an urgent political and theoretical topic. At the same time a number of female filmmakers have returned to the issues raised by Citron’s film, using techniques which, like hers, also ask us to question the relationship between narrative, memory, and the various forms through which their claims to truth are made. Here I discuss two: Stories We Tell (Polley, 2012) and The Arbor (Barnard 2010). Both concern quests to recover the mother as subject, very different from the nurturing and devouring figure of Citron’s film. Both manipulate and question footage that claims a direct, indexical relation to ‘truth’; both construct a story which employs techniques of narrative fiction, yet operate through processes which challenge the authority of such narratives. In this article I explore the two films, to ask how far they succeed in bringing the maternal subject into view, and in so doing successfully challenge conventional notions of what a subject is and can be.

中文翻译：

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不可能的科目？在我们讲述的故事中寻找母体主题（Polley 2012）和 The Arbor（Barnard 2010）

摘要 1977 年，Adrienne Rich 写道：“很难写出我自己的母亲。无论我写什么，我讲的都是我自己的故事。” 两年后，Michelle 的 Citron 的电影 Daughter Rite 也遇到了同样的问题。她后来写道，这是一部女儿的电影，“无法想象母亲的故事”。想象和概念化一个特定的母性主题的困难一直是女权主义学者关注的问题，在过去十年中再次成为一个紧迫的政治和理论话题。与此同时，一些女性电影人又回到了香橼电影提出的问题上，使用的技巧和她的一样，也让我们质疑叙事、记忆和各种形式之间的关系，通过这些形式，他们对真理的主张. 我在这里讨论两个：我们讲述的故事（波莉，2012) 和 The Arbor (Barnard 2010)。两者都以追回母亲为主题，与香橼电影中的养育和吞噬人物截然不同。操纵和质疑声称与“真相”有直接、索引关系的镜头；两者都构建了一个使用叙事小说技术的故事，但通过挑战这种叙事权威的过程来运作。在这篇文章中，我探讨了这两部电影，询问他们在多大程度上成功地将母性主题带入了视野，并成功地挑战了关于主题是什么和可以是什么的传统观念。与“真相”的索引关系；两者都构建了一个使用叙事小说技术的故事，但通过挑战这种叙事权威的过程来运作。在这篇文章中，我探讨了这两部电影，询问他们在多大程度上成功地将母性主题带入了视野，并成功地挑战了关于主题是什么和可以是什么的传统观念。与“真相”的索引关系；两者都构建了一个使用叙事小说技术的故事，但通过挑战这种叙事权威的过程来运作。在这篇文章中，我探讨了这两部电影，询问他们在多大程度上成功地将母性主题带入了视野，并成功地挑战了关于主题是什么和可以是什么的传统观念。