Metamorphic Rebirths: The representation of a Foster Child’s. ‘Transformation’ in Ashley Rhodes-Courter’s Three Little Words (2008) and Three More Words (2015) through Emanuele Coccia’s Metamorphoses (2021)

Abstract

This research examines the representation of a foster child’s ‘transformation’ in Ashley Rhodes-Courter’s Three Little Words (2008) and Three More Words (2015) through the contextual lens of Emanuele Coccia’s philosophical work: Metamorphoses (2021). By close-reading Rhodes-Courter’s testimonial memoirs, this study investigates how Coccia’s conception of transformation – as relational emergence and nurturing the Other with ourselves – is depicted, complicated, and reconfigured in the context of foster care. It asks: How is ‘transformation’ as described in Emmanuele Coccia’s work: Metamorphoses, depicted in Ashley Rhodes-Courters foster care memoirs; what narratological devices and content are employed; how do they reconfigure or complicate Coccia’s conception of transformation; and how to think beyond it? This thesis argues that transformation is depicted and enacted through multiple dimensions: ‘displacement’, which risks foreclosing affirmative inner change; and ‘motherhood’, ‘narration’, and ‘imagination’, which can create cocoon-spaces enabling metamorphic rebirths through continual reconfiguration.