ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about birth, bodies and politics. It explores the multivocality of birth narratives across these sociomaterial divides and contestations. The book draws on a range of theoretical and methodological resources including: Michel Foucault's 'analytics of power'; new materialist concepts of assemblage, diffraction and intra-action; Julia Kristeva's theorization of the relationship between language and bodies; and a dialogical approach to narratives. It focuses on 'risky bodies' as enacted in women's birth stories. The 'risky body' of birth was not singular and risk, in relation to birth, was not only about biomedical risk. The book explores the violations produced in birth narratives. It shows how 'gentle violence', embedded in the norms, sociomaterial and affective currents of assemblages, work to generate passive subjectivities, constricted forms of agency and docile bodies, particularly in public sector contexts.