Paradoxical Subjects - Women Telling Birth Stories

Chadwick, Rachelle Joy

Paradoxical Subjects - Women Telling Birth Stories

Doctoral Thesis

2007

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Psychology

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

This study focuses on the construction of subjectivity in and through the telling of birth stories. Drawing on 50 interviews with middle-class women, most of who "chose" to birth either at home or via elective caesarean section, the thesis explores how women make birth "choices" and "experience" home-birth and caesarean-birth within a South African setting. Furthermore, by employing a range of theoretical resources, including the work of Julia Kristeva, Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Young and materialist feminists such as Nancy Hartsock and Maria Mies, this study explores the forms of embodied subjectivity that emerge in birth narratives. Engaging in both an ideological analysis and a narrative analysis, the thesis shows how women's "choices" and "experiences" are always situated within or in relation to cultural story lines, dominant ideologies and material contexts. However, at the same time, through the use of a Kristevan theory of bodieslanguage- subjectivity, the thesis also demonstrates how "the body" itself often becomes transfused into women's talk about birth, resulting in paradoxical and contradictory forms of subjectivity.

Keywords

Psychology

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

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