ABSTRACT
This chapter explores mistreatment during pregnancy/birth through the conceptual lens of ‘epistemic violence’. The chapter draws on feminist philosopher Kristie Dotson’s work on practices of silencing (testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering) to explore the systemic devaluation and muting of (marginalised) girls’ embodied knowledge and voices during labour/birth as a form of obstetric violence. The pregnancy, birth and early mothering narratives of five young, impoverished, black mothers (collected via three interviews with each participant) are analysed in/through the theoretical lenses of epistemic silencing and hermeneutical violence. The analysis explores the ways in which different ‘practices of silencing’ work to colonise and appropriate marginalised girls’ labour/birth experiences. Three key forms of silencing are explored, namely (1) systematic erasure, (2) smothering and (3) acts of quieting. In the analysis, failed communicative exchanges, in which labouring/birthing girls’ status as knowers is unrecognised, repudiated and denied by biomedical epistemic frameworks and everyday practices, are argued to underpin ‘practices of silencing’, which function as forms of obstetric violence.
