ABSTRACT
The chapter suggests the idea of the uber-performing uterus to discuss the hyper-productive wombs of real women Henrietta Lacks (1920–1951) and Eve Ensler (1953–) through intersectional and ecological lenses in the uterine cancer plays Family Tree by Mojisola Adebayo (2021) and In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler (2016). It argues that an uber-performing uterus ‘acts’ extremely or excessively, works above its function, performs across matter and beyond itself and is super-productive or hyper-proliferative. Whatever the uber-performing uterus generates, it is a manifestation of something that is already in the world or that has been prompted in response to the world, hence the use of the phrase ‘ecologies of the womb’. The wombs discussed are both pathologised and pathological, but, as the plays’ womb ecologies reveal, they are nevertheless capable of engaging with healing practices.
