本文借用葛林（André Green, 1927- ）所提出的結構性概念「死媽媽」（the dead mother）一詞，轉化用來分析討論日本動漫及台灣小說文本所再現的、離開正典母職母愛狀態的「死媽媽」形象。本文指出：在許多通俗文化動漫文本以及學院或文學愛好者閱讀的小說作品中，當「死媽媽」狀態的描述出現時，不論創作或閱讀，文化想像不必然以「國家未來主人翁」為中心，不盡然是現代「保護兒童」基調單面向地對於出軌失序、情感缺席或非正典母親之厭惡、驚嚇與擔憂，相反的，可能有一種與「死媽媽」之間的情感依附，對於「死媽媽」愛恨交纏的依戀，才是眾多「死媽媽」文本的生產動力所在。

Inspired by French psychoanalyst André Green's structural concept "the dead mother," this paper transforms and expands its meaning literally and metaphorically to refer to the physical and psychical dead mother, including the melancholic mother, or any non-normative mothers with bad feelings or negative cultural implications. We analyze the complicated politics of affects in such cultural products as Japanese manga/anime (originated in Japan but widely read and consumed in Taiwan) and Taiwanese novels from the 1950s to the present. We suggest that an attachment to "the dead mother" is a productive dynamic for the various representations of the dead mother and their social, affective implications. In this attachment, the politics of everyday affects goes against the grain of the normative discipline or fantasy of a "good" family. Through the melancholic eyes of "the dead mother," we can then reread those texts and trace queer feelings internal to the symbolic and explore the melancholic politics of intimacy.