1st Edition
Obstetric Violence and the Birthing Body A Reading from Feminist Philosophy
Introduction: The Problem of Obstetric Violence Chapter One: The Phenomenological Perspective: Silenced Bodies, Solitary Bodies Chapter Two: The Epistemological Perspective: Is This Violence? Gaslighting and Testimonial Injustice Chapter Three: #MeToo for the Labor Room: On Consent and the Opaqueness of Birthing Subjectivity Chapter Four: Making Ourselves into Objects: Complicity with Submission in Obstetric Violence Chapter Five: Conclusions: Keeping Birthing Bodies Grotesque—Or Reclaiming Disorientation
Biography
Sara Cohen Shabot is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department and Chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at The University of Haifa, Israel, specializing in feminist philosophy, phenomenology, and philosophies of the body. Her present research and publications address feminist philosophical perspectives on childbirth and the maternal embodied subject.
"This magnificent book demands that the reader rethink what birthing bodies and subjects are, and indeed what birth is. By exploring conceptions of birth as grotesque, erratic and uncertain it produces new insights into how birthing bodies are subjected to violence and shame. Brilliant, insightful and inspiring, this book speaks to the mind and the heart in finding new ways of restoring birthing to its rightful site as an act of awe."
Jonathan Herring, Professor of Law, University of Oxford; DM Wolfe-Clarendon Fellow in Law, Exeter College, Oxford
“Professor Cohen Shabot brings new depth of analysis to the universal experience of Obstetric Violence. Her powerful book outlines deeply held societal behavioral and existential conceptions of women and birthing persons that make violence against them normative. We can only change the structural violence of our societies through this understanding.”
Annekathryn Goodman, Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, Reproductive Biology, Harvard Medical School, Director Strength & Serenity MGH Global Initiative to End Gender-Based Violence
“This book delivers a critical feminist intervention on obstetric violence. Sara Cohen Shabot’s bold theoretical insight unsettles entrenched paradigms and illuminates birth as both a site of violence and horizon of possibility. A field-defining contribution that will resonate across disciplines.”
Camilla Pickles, Associate Professor of Biolaw, Durham University
