ABSTRACT
One of the major strands of feminism concerned with reproduction, represented in this chapter by Shulamith Firestone, is tied to a belief in technology as the means to achieve reproductive justice. We offer a perspective on achieving reproductive justice from a different position based on another age-old materialist doctrine, but one that is largely neglected by feminism: that of midwifery. Midwifery’s epistemological standpoint can be characterized as a somatophilic techne that aims to think with the body rather than fix it. There is, however, a tendency in midwifery towards anti-technological essentialism. This essay aims to redirect this tendency to the more promising materialist doctrine of midwifery as well as Firestonian feminism, reimagining this materialist stance as somatophilic “midwifery thinking.”
