Abstract
This chapter negotiates contesting knowledge systems with regards to human reproduction and medicine. In particular, it asks what literature and culture can tell us about the following two contested spheres of knowledge: midwifery and obstetrics. In order to trace the history of reproduction, the pregnant body and often contradictory discourses revolving around birth, this chapter utilises Michel Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia to argue that childbirth remains a ‘crisis heterotopia’ to this day. It does so by turning to selected literary and cultural artefacts of the long eighteenth century—the period that witnessed a major power shift from the female-connoted realm of midwifery to the male-dominated sphere of obstetrics—and entangles these texts with past and present medical discourses. This chapter concludes that not only the fictional as well as medical fragmentation of the pregnant body significantly contributed to the pathologisation of childbirth, but that both birth narratives and the actual birth room are still to be understood as knowledge arenas, thus highlighting the ongoing topicality of questions about reproduction and power.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2016 Wieland Schwanebeck chose a similar approach and conceptualized the uterus as a metaphorical arena in his contribution “The Womb as a Battlefield—Debating Medical Authority in the Renaissance Midwife Manuel.” In this text Schwanebeck asks how midwife manuals, published by both female and male authors, contributed to the (medical) objectification of the female body that resulted in a controlling (medical) gaze. He concedes that the multitude of discourses in the sixteenth and seventeenth century often contradicted each other and thus calls for more studies of this sort. I wish to extend Schwanebeck’s investigation not only by moving from the Renaissance to the (long) eighteenth century but also by synthesizing the womb and the child-bed into one concept: the birth room. What is more, I shall frame my examination with the Foucauldian concept of the heterotopia in order to make the metaphor of the birth room as a battle arena more tangible here.
- 2.
His examples include the theatre and the cinema with their multitude of different places in one space as well as the gardens and carpets of the Orient that represent, as microcosms, the “totality of the world” (Foucault 1984, 6).
- 3.
34.3% of women in the UK received an epidural during the first decade of the millennium (Dahlen et al. 2013) while on average 61% of them were treated equally in 2008 in the US (Osterman and Martin 2008). In 2016, as much as 83.8% of birthing women had an epidural in France (Blondel et al. 2017). According to the NHS, risks include low blood pressure, loss of bladder control, infection and permanent nerve damage (NHS 2020).
- 4.
C-section rates vary widely worldwide. In non-European countries like Brazil, the rate stands by 55.5% while in South Sudan, only 0.6% of babies are delivered by cesarean section. The US on contrast shows a rate of 32.7 in 2013 (Brazier 2015). According to the NHS, C-section risks include infection of the wound and womb, excessive bleeding, thrombosis, damage to bladder, tubes and kidneys and opening scars (NHS 2019).
- 5.
Snow White’s mother died during childbirth in Grimm’s eponymous fairy tale (1812). The mother of Charles Dickens’ hero Oliver Twist (novel, 1838) shares the same fate, so does Catherine’s mother in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847). In Robert Zemeckis’ sci-fi film Contact (1995), Ellie’s mother does not survive childbirth, neither does Vada’s mother in Howard Zieff’s coming-of-age movie My Girl (1991).
- 6.
Expectant fathers did not move from the waiting room to the birthing room until the 1970s as Leavitt points out in her book Make Room for Daddy (2009).
- 7.
“Cunicularis” is Latin and means “rabbit.”.
- 8.
For a more detailed analysis of Hogarth’s piece see Dennis Todd’s article “Three characters in Hogarth’s Cunicularii—and some implications” (1982).
- 9.
“Hew” probably means “cleavage.”.
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Henke, J.S. (2023). Contesting Spaces of Knowledge: Reproduction, Medicine and Literature. In: Febel, G., Knopf, K., Nonhoff, M. (eds) Contradiction Studies – Exploring the Field. Contradiction Studies. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37784-7_9
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