In de gezondheidszorg en ethiek rondom zwangerschap en geboorte is de aandacht vaak gefocust op h... more In de gezondheidszorg en ethiek rondom zwangerschap en geboorte is de aandacht vaak gefocust op het kind: het kind dat gewenst wordt, het kind dat in de baarmoeder groeit en zo gezond mogelijk ter wereld dient te komen, het kind dat mogelijk een beperking heeft, of dat een erfelijk risico loopt. Deze kwesties krijgen terecht aandacht in de zorg; de inspanningen van de meeste wens- of aanstaande ouders en de zorgprofessionals zijn gericht op een gezond kind met een goede start. Minder aandacht krijgen echter de ethische en existentiële kwesties die te maken hebben met de moeder, haar beleving, haar transitie naar moederschap.
Obstetric violence, a term coined by activists in Latin America to describe violence during pregn... more Obstetric violence, a term coined by activists in Latin America to describe violence during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum, is a controversial feminist term in global health policymaking as well as in obstetric and midwifery practice and research. We reflect on the term both theoretically and autoethnographically to demonstrate its feminist value in addressing the problem of violence as embedded within the obstetric institution. We argue that obstetric violence as an activist and critical feminist concept can only be effective for change when it is clearly understood as institutionalized intersectional violence. Therefore, we propose an abolitionist framework for further study. Through this lens, we refract the concept of obstetric violence as institutionalized, intersectional, and racializing violence by (1) making an abolitionist historiography of the obstetric institution, and (2) centering anti-Black obstetric racism as the anchor point of obstetric violence, where the afterlife of slavery, racial capitalism, the impact of systemic racism, and the consequences of patriarchal biopolitics come together. Abolition provides a unique approach to study obstetric violence since it not only refuses and dismantles violent institutions, but specifically focuses on building futures out of existing alternative practices toward a life-affirming world of care. We locate the abolitionist futures of maternity care in Black, Indigenous, and independent doula and midwifery practices.
Building on the work of Mbembe (2019) and Silva (2007), we theorise how the obstetric institution... more Building on the work of Mbembe (2019) and Silva (2007), we theorise how the obstetric institution can still be considered fundamentally modern, that is, entangled with colonialism, slavery, bio- and necropolitics and patriarchal subjectivity. We argue that the modern obstetric subject (doctor or midwife) representing the obstetric institution engulfs the (m)other in a typically modern way as othered, racialised, affectable and outer-determined, in order to constitute itself in terms of self-determination and universal reason. While Davis-Floyd (1987) described obstetric training as a rite of passage into a technocratic model of childbirth, we argue that students’ rite of passage is not merely an initiation into a technological model of childbirth. The many instances of obstetric violence and racism in their training make a more fundamental problem visible, namely that students come of age within obstetrics through the violent appropriation of the (m)other. We amplify students’ curricular encounters in two colonially related geopolitical spaces, South Africa and the Netherlands, and in two professions, obstetric medicine and midwifery, to highlight global systemic tendencies that push students to cross ethical, social and political boundaries towards the (m)other they are trained to care for. The embedment of obstetric violence in their rite of passage ensures the reproduction of the modern obstetric subject, the racialised (m)other, and institutionalised violence worldwide.
Rachelle Chadwick has been a crucial voice in theorising and exploring obstetric violence in the ... more Rachelle Chadwick has been a crucial voice in theorising and exploring obstetric violence in the global south, especially in South Africa. Chadwick has published widely on reproductive politics, bi...
Nursing Ethics has published several pleas for care ethics and/or relationality as the most promi... more Nursing Ethics has published several pleas for care ethics and/or relationality as the most promising ethical foundation for midwifery philosophy and practice. In this article, we stand by these calls, contributing to them with the identification of the structural form of violence that a care ethical relational approach to reproductive care is up against: that of “maternal separation”. Confronted with reproductive and obstetric violence globally, we show that a hegemonic racialized, instrumentalized, and individualized conception of pregnancy is responsible for a severance of relationalities that are essential to safe reproductive care: (1) the relation between the person and their child or reproductive capabilities; and (2) the relation between the pregnant person and their community of care. We pinpoint a separation of the maternal relation in at least two discursive domains, namely, the juridical-political and the ethical-existential. Consequently, we plea for a radical re-imagin...
Building on the work of Mbembe (2019) and Silva (2007), we theorise how the obstetric institution... more Building on the work of Mbembe (2019) and Silva (2007), we theorise how the obstetric institution can still be considered fundamentally modern, that is, entangled with colonialism, slavery, bio- and necropolitics and patriarchal subjectivity. We argue that the modern obstetric subject (doctor or midwife) representing the obstetric institution engulfs the (m)other in a typically modern way as othered, racialised, affectable and outer-determined, in order to constitute itself in terms of self-determination and universal reason.
While Davis-Floyd (1987) described obstetric training as a rite of passage into a technocratic model of childbirth, we argue that students’ rite of passage is not merely an initiation into a technological model of childbirth. The many instances of obstetric violence and racism in their training make a more fundamental problem visible, namely that students come of age within obstetrics through the violent appropriation of the (m)other.
We amplify students’ curricular encounters in two colonially related geopolitical spaces, South Africa and the Netherlands, and in two professions, obstetric medicine and midwifery, to highlight global systemic tendencies that push students to cross ethical, social and political boundaries towards the (m)other they are trained to care for. The embedment of obstetric violence in their rite of passage ensures the reproduction of the modern obstetric subject, the racialised (m)other, and institutionalised violence worldwide.
In de gezondheidszorg en ethiek rondom zwangerschap en geboorte is de aandacht vaak gefocust op h... more In de gezondheidszorg en ethiek rondom zwangerschap en geboorte is de aandacht vaak gefocust op het kind: het kind dat gewenst wordt, het kind dat in de baarmoeder groeit en zo gezond mogelijk ter wereld dient te komen, het kind dat mogelijk een beperking heeft, of dat een erfelijk risico loopt. Deze kwesties krijgen terecht aandacht in de zorg; de inspanningen van de meeste wens- of aanstaande ouders en de zorgprofessionals zijn gericht op een gezond kind met een goede start. Minder aandacht krijgen echter de ethische en existentiële kwesties die te maken hebben met de moeder, haar beleving, haar transitie naar moederschap.
The Pregnant Posthuman is the daughter of Donna Harraway's cyborg and Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman,... more The Pregnant Posthuman is the daughter of Donna Harraway's cyborg and Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman, of Lyotard’s ‘she’, the inhuman feminine philosopher, as well as Hannah Arendt’s natal subject. Being a(n) (un)dutiful daughter of her mothers, she presents herself as an image, a fiction, a stand-point, a reality. She is a singular subject, but inside her subjectivity there is another subject growing, one that nobody can see yet. She is in a singular plural state and in intimate experience with the new, the relational, plurality. She is the first philosophical subject capable of carrying, of giving birth.
In de gezondheidszorg en ethiek rondom zwangerschap en geboorte is de aandacht vaak gefocust op h... more In de gezondheidszorg en ethiek rondom zwangerschap en geboorte is de aandacht vaak gefocust op het kind: het kind dat gewenst wordt, het kind dat in de baarmoeder groeit en zo gezond mogelijk ter wereld dient te komen, het kind dat mogelijk een beperking heeft, of dat een erfelijk risico loopt. Deze kwesties krijgen terecht aandacht in de zorg; de inspanningen van de meeste wens- of aanstaande ouders en de zorgprofessionals zijn gericht op een gezond kind met een goede start. Minder aandacht krijgen echter de ethische en existentiële kwesties die te maken hebben met de moeder, haar beleving, haar transitie naar moederschap.
Obstetric violence, a term coined by activists in Latin America to describe violence during pregn... more Obstetric violence, a term coined by activists in Latin America to describe violence during pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum, is a controversial feminist term in global health policymaking as well as in obstetric and midwifery practice and research. We reflect on the term both theoretically and autoethnographically to demonstrate its feminist value in addressing the problem of violence as embedded within the obstetric institution. We argue that obstetric violence as an activist and critical feminist concept can only be effective for change when it is clearly understood as institutionalized intersectional violence. Therefore, we propose an abolitionist framework for further study. Through this lens, we refract the concept of obstetric violence as institutionalized, intersectional, and racializing violence by (1) making an abolitionist historiography of the obstetric institution, and (2) centering anti-Black obstetric racism as the anchor point of obstetric violence, where the afterlife of slavery, racial capitalism, the impact of systemic racism, and the consequences of patriarchal biopolitics come together. Abolition provides a unique approach to study obstetric violence since it not only refuses and dismantles violent institutions, but specifically focuses on building futures out of existing alternative practices toward a life-affirming world of care. We locate the abolitionist futures of maternity care in Black, Indigenous, and independent doula and midwifery practices.
Building on the work of Mbembe (2019) and Silva (2007), we theorise how the obstetric institution... more Building on the work of Mbembe (2019) and Silva (2007), we theorise how the obstetric institution can still be considered fundamentally modern, that is, entangled with colonialism, slavery, bio- and necropolitics and patriarchal subjectivity. We argue that the modern obstetric subject (doctor or midwife) representing the obstetric institution engulfs the (m)other in a typically modern way as othered, racialised, affectable and outer-determined, in order to constitute itself in terms of self-determination and universal reason. While Davis-Floyd (1987) described obstetric training as a rite of passage into a technocratic model of childbirth, we argue that students’ rite of passage is not merely an initiation into a technological model of childbirth. The many instances of obstetric violence and racism in their training make a more fundamental problem visible, namely that students come of age within obstetrics through the violent appropriation of the (m)other. We amplify students’ curricular encounters in two colonially related geopolitical spaces, South Africa and the Netherlands, and in two professions, obstetric medicine and midwifery, to highlight global systemic tendencies that push students to cross ethical, social and political boundaries towards the (m)other they are trained to care for. The embedment of obstetric violence in their rite of passage ensures the reproduction of the modern obstetric subject, the racialised (m)other, and institutionalised violence worldwide.
Rachelle Chadwick has been a crucial voice in theorising and exploring obstetric violence in the ... more Rachelle Chadwick has been a crucial voice in theorising and exploring obstetric violence in the global south, especially in South Africa. Chadwick has published widely on reproductive politics, bi...
Nursing Ethics has published several pleas for care ethics and/or relationality as the most promi... more Nursing Ethics has published several pleas for care ethics and/or relationality as the most promising ethical foundation for midwifery philosophy and practice. In this article, we stand by these calls, contributing to them with the identification of the structural form of violence that a care ethical relational approach to reproductive care is up against: that of “maternal separation”. Confronted with reproductive and obstetric violence globally, we show that a hegemonic racialized, instrumentalized, and individualized conception of pregnancy is responsible for a severance of relationalities that are essential to safe reproductive care: (1) the relation between the person and their child or reproductive capabilities; and (2) the relation between the pregnant person and their community of care. We pinpoint a separation of the maternal relation in at least two discursive domains, namely, the juridical-political and the ethical-existential. Consequently, we plea for a radical re-imagin...
Building on the work of Mbembe (2019) and Silva (2007), we theorise how the obstetric institution... more Building on the work of Mbembe (2019) and Silva (2007), we theorise how the obstetric institution can still be considered fundamentally modern, that is, entangled with colonialism, slavery, bio- and necropolitics and patriarchal subjectivity. We argue that the modern obstetric subject (doctor or midwife) representing the obstetric institution engulfs the (m)other in a typically modern way as othered, racialised, affectable and outer-determined, in order to constitute itself in terms of self-determination and universal reason.
While Davis-Floyd (1987) described obstetric training as a rite of passage into a technocratic model of childbirth, we argue that students’ rite of passage is not merely an initiation into a technological model of childbirth. The many instances of obstetric violence and racism in their training make a more fundamental problem visible, namely that students come of age within obstetrics through the violent appropriation of the (m)other.
We amplify students’ curricular encounters in two colonially related geopolitical spaces, South Africa and the Netherlands, and in two professions, obstetric medicine and midwifery, to highlight global systemic tendencies that push students to cross ethical, social and political boundaries towards the (m)other they are trained to care for. The embedment of obstetric violence in their rite of passage ensures the reproduction of the modern obstetric subject, the racialised (m)other, and institutionalised violence worldwide.
In de gezondheidszorg en ethiek rondom zwangerschap en geboorte is de aandacht vaak gefocust op h... more In de gezondheidszorg en ethiek rondom zwangerschap en geboorte is de aandacht vaak gefocust op het kind: het kind dat gewenst wordt, het kind dat in de baarmoeder groeit en zo gezond mogelijk ter wereld dient te komen, het kind dat mogelijk een beperking heeft, of dat een erfelijk risico loopt. Deze kwesties krijgen terecht aandacht in de zorg; de inspanningen van de meeste wens- of aanstaande ouders en de zorgprofessionals zijn gericht op een gezond kind met een goede start. Minder aandacht krijgen echter de ethische en existentiële kwesties die te maken hebben met de moeder, haar beleving, haar transitie naar moederschap.
The Pregnant Posthuman is the daughter of Donna Harraway's cyborg and Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman,... more The Pregnant Posthuman is the daughter of Donna Harraway's cyborg and Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman, of Lyotard’s ‘she’, the inhuman feminine philosopher, as well as Hannah Arendt’s natal subject. Being a(n) (un)dutiful daughter of her mothers, she presents herself as an image, a fiction, a stand-point, a reality. She is a singular subject, but inside her subjectivity there is another subject growing, one that nobody can see yet. She is in a singular plural state and in intimate experience with the new, the relational, plurality. She is the first philosophical subject capable of carrying, of giving birth.
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While Davis-Floyd (1987) described obstetric training as a rite of passage into a technocratic model of childbirth, we argue that students’ rite of passage is not merely an initiation into a technological model of childbirth. The many instances of obstetric violence and racism in their training make a more fundamental problem visible, namely that students come of age within obstetrics through the violent appropriation of the (m)other.
We amplify students’ curricular encounters in two colonially related geopolitical spaces, South Africa and the Netherlands, and in two professions, obstetric medicine and midwifery, to highlight global systemic tendencies that push students to cross ethical, social and political boundaries towards the (m)other they are trained to care for. The embedment of obstetric violence in their rite of passage ensures the reproduction of the modern obstetric subject, the racialised (m)other, and institutionalised violence worldwide.
While Davis-Floyd (1987) described obstetric training as a rite of passage into a technocratic model of childbirth, we argue that students’ rite of passage is not merely an initiation into a technological model of childbirth. The many instances of obstetric violence and racism in their training make a more fundamental problem visible, namely that students come of age within obstetrics through the violent appropriation of the (m)other.
We amplify students’ curricular encounters in two colonially related geopolitical spaces, South Africa and the Netherlands, and in two professions, obstetric medicine and midwifery, to highlight global systemic tendencies that push students to cross ethical, social and political boundaries towards the (m)other they are trained to care for. The embedment of obstetric violence in their rite of passage ensures the reproduction of the modern obstetric subject, the racialised (m)other, and institutionalised violence worldwide.