When pregnancy ends unexpectedly without the birth of a living child, we are forced to reckon with the damaging effects of normative discourses of pregnancy governed by birth as its “proper”, “natural” and “normal” endpoint. We are also confronted with the realities of contingency and ambiguity that are otherwise concealed and the question of what pregnancy might amount to besides the production of a child.Putting miscarriage experiences front and centre when these narratives are so often marginalized, misunderstood and silenced, can illuminate important aspects of pregnancy that move beyond its childbearing function, and expand our understanding of the multiple ways pregnancy can play out and be lived. Pregnancy Without Birth brings miscarrying and un-pregnant bodies into the centre of the frame can do important work in destabilizing normative models of pregnancy as a passage to birth and motherhood; and conversely, if such models were destabilized, miscarriage would become less “unthinkable” in the process. Victoria Browne takes up themes that are commonly articulated within personal accounts of miscarriage —feelings of failure, of guilt and powerlessness, of uncertainty and loss, of being “stuck in limbo”, of exclusion from the “pregnancy world”—as catalysts for a serious philosophical and political rethink of pregnancy.

Pregnancy Without Birth: A Feminist Philosophy of Miscarriage PDF

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