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Cyborg Uterine Geography

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Cyborg Uterine Geography Article Dialogues in Human Geography 2018, Vol. 8(3) 300–316 ª The Author(s) 2018 Cyborg uterine geography: Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions Complicating ‘care’ DOI: 10.1177/2043820618804625 and social reproduction journals.sagepub.com/home/dhg Sophie Lewis Independent Scholar, USA Abstract Most geographers have sided with ‘cyborgs’ (technonatural subjects) against ‘goddesses’ (e.g. Mother Earth) on questions of embodiment. In itself this provides no justification for the relative dearth (in geography) of theorizing ‘with’ the uterus as a site of doing and undoing; what I propose to call uterine geography. ‘Uterine’ relations are fundamentally cyborg, animatedly labouring and not only spatial but spatializing: they make and unmake places, borders, kin. This includes not only abortion, miscarriage, menstruation and pregnancy (whose transcorporeal and chimeric character is well documented in medical anthropology) but also other life-enabling forms of holding and letting go that do not involve anatomical uteri (such as trans-mothering and other alter-familial practices). Despite our discipline’s ostensible interest in co-production, hybridity and the more-than-human, the ‘doing’ aspects of intra and interuterine processes have tended to be black- boxed in accounts of care economies and social reproduction. The proposed remedy is deromanticization: an approach that critically politicizes uterine relations as historically contingent and subject to amelioration through struggle. Potential aides include Maggie Nelson’s idea that ‘labor does you’, Suzanne Sadedin’s account of gestation’s mutual hostility and the concepts of ‘sym-poiesis’ and ‘metramorphosis’. One notable consequence of this expanded concept of the uterine is that ‘assisted reproduction’, as it is characterized today, ceases to be categorically separate from other kinds of reproduction. Keywords gestation, maternal, matrixial, reproductive technology, reproduction, sym-poiesis, staying with the trouble, transcorporeal, trans reproductive justice, uterus Cyborg gestation 2002; Whatmore, 2006; Wilson, 2009). ‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’ – the immortal In determining how best to conceptualize the closing lines of the Cyborg Manifesto – had, after chimeric character of human, or rather, ‘more- than-human’ embodiment, many geographers have intuitively opted for the impure, partial agent Donna Haraway (1989) called ‘cyborg’, over the powerful Corresponding author: Sophie Lewis, Independent Scholar, 4815 Baltimore Ave, 3R and pure mother-goddess archetype of ecofeminism Philadelphia, PA 19143, USA. (namely, Kirsch, 2014; Lorimer, 2011; Schuurman, Email: [email protected] Lewis 301 all, not only articulated but resolved this choice biological determinism as the reason why feminists (Haraway, 1989). It is in the critical field of geogra- in this field have ‘tend[ed] not to study pregnancy, phy that the notion of a monstrous, hybrid, ‘cyborg birthing and breastfeeding as material processes’ urbanization’ has principally been elaborated (Hird, 2007: 3). Hird herself has ventured to (Gandy, 2005; Swyngedouw, 1996). Yet, in ways describe these material processes anew – and many also inspired by Haraway – whose latest work others along the way – in terms of ‘gifting’ and appeals to a litany of Indigenous mother- ‘corporeal generosity’: ‘the literal and metaphoric goddesses such as Tangaroa, Naga and Pachamama giving of our selves’ including dust, DNA, viruses, (Haraway, 2016: 101) – feminist geographers have white and red blood, myriad other cells and bacteria also found room for ‘goddess’-inspired ecologies as (Hird, 2007: 14). The intervention in question is part of the broader assault on modernity’s nature/ highly instructive but, in my reading, nevertheless culture binary or else rejected the cyborg/goddess persists in sweetening the account of uterine rela- dichotomy in the first place (Gergan, 2015; Jacobs tionality somewhat – implying that the gifting is and Nash, 2003; Nesmith and Radcliffe, 1993; more or less symmetric, while leaving out moments Sundberg, 2014). But for those of us unnerved by of refusing, devouring and killing that, as will see, what appears to be at best a latent rehabilitation of also characterize this deeply intimate bedrock of eugenic and populationist thought in multispecies interpersonal care. feminism (‘make kin not babies’; Haraway, 2016), It was non-fiction literature that first elicited in the figure of the cyborg is likely to remain an emi- me the desire for an unromantic, or cyborg, uterine nently preferable heuristic to the ‘goddess’ – pre- geography. In her memoir The Argonauts (2015), cisely because of its potential for deromanticizing Maggie Nelson describes the endpoint of her own the politics of mothering, care and reproduction, uterine labour as an event that ‘runs you over like a where it is usually not the one (of the two) to be truck’ (Nelson, 2015: 134). She recalls receiving deployed. Neither pro- nor anti-natalist, neither pro- sobering advice during her pregnancy: ‘You don’t nor anti-maternal, the cyborg was and remains an do labor. Labor does you’ (Nelson, 2015: 134) account of a historically specific proletarian labourer, (Emphasis is added). Reading this passage, it struck an anti-racist feminist subjectivity that is hybrid: me that a long line of anti-work thinkers, from the network-situated yet antagonistic vis-a`-vis capital- Wages for Housework Committee onwards, have ism, colonized yet complicit, more-than-human yet described all alienated labour – particularly the corporeal and avowedly ‘non-innocent’ (Haraway, work of love under capitalism – in this way. Nota- 1989). In misrecognized surrogate ways, the cyborg bly, in the eyes of the militants who sought to pit labours. She (not necessarily a ‘she’) makes and wages against housework, ‘every miscarriage is a unmakes babies, identities, cities. Cyborgicity is thus workplace accident’ (Federici, 1975). What kind far more conducive to spatial–historic thinking than of workplace are talking about? Nelson continues: any vitalist, pro-maternal figuration of the human animal as tragically divorced from (yet innately If all goes well, the baby will make it out alive, and so reconcilable to) the web of life. Moreover, as this will you. Nonetheless, you will have touched death article argues, it is far more conducive to thinking along the way. You will have realized that death will uterine labour and uterine labour geographies, spe- do you too, without fail and without mercy. (Nelson, cifically, in an anti-capitalist way. 2015: 134) While the monopolizing of womb-related mat- ters by various either pro- or anti-natal mythologies In The Argonauts, there are two survivors of suggests an explanation for the relative dearth in pregnancy, and one – cyborg – subject. If the work feminist geography of theorizing with the uterus as of pregnancy is desired by its bearer, the impossible a site of doing – what I propose to call uterine geo- job of the cervix becomes, first, to stay shut and graphy – it does not really provide an excuse. Myra thereafter, as Nelson reflects (since her delivery was Hird is right, I think, to identify wariness of vaginal) to ‘go to pieces’. The moment of 302 Dialogues in Human Geography 8(3) parturition, this subject tells, ‘demands surrender’ such as trans mothering, end-of-life care, adoption, and brings you psychically to your knees. Extrapo- foster care and other practices that provide for lating from this encounter with death, Nelson sug- births, better deaths or survival. gests there is a social necessity for humans to forget In my opinion, despite our discipline’s ostensible gestation. She notes, by way of evidence, that hege- interest in co-production, hybridity and the more- monic narratives about pregnancy tend to subsume than-human, the relational animacy of these pro- any and all suffering (the individual’s heroic means) cesses has often been black-boxed in accounts of under ends (the baby). As the wracked anonymity of ‘care’ and social reproduction. The remedy, I a British news article of December 2016 confirms – believe, begins with deromanticization: an approach collecting testimonies from ‘Parents who regret that critically politicizes uterine relations as histori- having children’ (BBC, 2016) – most morally cally contingent and subject to amelioration through prescribed scripts gloss over post-partum trauma struggle. If ‘care’ and ‘social reproduction’ are the and not only presume but demand happiness (newly re-popularized) words we have at our dispo- (Ahmed, 2010). In Nelson’s memoir, death, birth, sal to describe this business of (re)making and of parenting and gender transition are each being made, then they require thoroughgoing dero- described in terms of asymmetric but mutual manticizing in our discipline. Some materials of forms of holding and letting go. I attempt to stay interest to this end include the following variations with this insight in what follows. on the idea that ‘labor does you’ back, consisting of Theoretic treatments of uterine (non-)productiv- a weave of holding and letting go that moves us ity as collective and political are overwhelmingly through each other’s bodies: the molecular biologist initiated in subjects like English (Handlarski, Suzanne Sadedin’s account of gestation’s mutual 2010), history (Murphy, 2012) and cultural studies violence (Sadedin, 2014); the concept ‘sym-poiesis’ (Tyler in Ahmed and Stacey, 2001). Feminist sci- (i.e. making-with; Haraway,
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