• A comradely politics of gestational work: Militant particularism, sympoetic scholarship and the limits of generosity

    Author(s):
    reproutopia (see profile)
    Date:
    2018
    Group(s):
    Critical Disability Studies, Feminist Humanities, Speculative and Science Fiction
    Subject(s):
    Feminist geography, Reproductive rights, Motherhood, Reproduction--Philosophy
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    gender-inclusive reproductive rights, transgender reproductive justice, gestation is work, wages for houseowrk, antiwork politics, Reproductive justice, Queer and gender studies, Maternal studies, Reproduction theory
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6KS6J46X
    Abstract:
    In response to the four commentaries on ‘Cyborg uterine geography’, in which I argued normatively for reorganizing gestation on the basis of comradeliness, I grapple with three overlapping conceptual areas highlighted: the ethical and political affordances of the term ‘generosity’ in relation to care and pregnancy; the methodological question of bringing insights from the uterine field of ‘sympoeisis’ (‘making-with’, Haraway 2016) into the practice of scholarship; and the desire for more place-based specificity in the mapping of uterine geographies (plural, rather than singular; ‘normal’, as well as ‘queer’). Throughout this reply, I tie my remarks back to the core framework I advance in my piece, of gestation being work which, as such, has no predetermined gender, is subject to transformation through struggle, should not be romanticized (for instance, by identifying it with ‘the biological maternal’). Firstly, I rethink what it means to valorize gestational relationality in terms of generousness, from an antiwork perspective. Secondly, I engage the question, ‘can uterine geographies also create a methodology of engagement’? while seeking to qualify the proposed embrace of ‘indeterminacy’. Thirdly, I respond to concerns about the ‘universality’ in my piece by considering some contemporary examples of uterine politicization, specifically around abortion, that suggest to me that specificity has served as the matrix through which a ‘militant particularism’ can emerge in the form of geographically far-flung Reproductive Justice solidarities.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.1177/2043820618800603
    Publisher:
    SAGE Publications
    Pub. Date:
    2018-11-8
    Journal:
    Dialogues in Human Geography
    Volume:
    8
    Issue:
    3
    Page Range:
    333 - 339
    ISSN:
    2043-8206,2043-8214
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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