A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Always More Than Two: Vibrations, the Foetus, and the Pregnant Person in Childbirth Singing Practices
Authors: Leppanen Taru
Publisher: TAYLOR & FRANCIS AS
Publication year: 2018
Journal: NORA Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research
Journal name in source: NORA-NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH
Journal acronym: NORA
Volume: 26
Issue: 2
First page : 99
Last page: 111
Number of pages: 13
ISSN: 0803-8740
eISSN: 1502-394X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2018.1462255
Abstract
The goal of this article is to expand the theoretical approaches in feminist research that have explored the relationship between the pregnant person and the foetus in terms of constitutive relationality. I examine new ways of understanding and conceptualizing such a relationship, which may be enabled by the concept of vibration, by focusing on a childbirth-singing method developed and taught by Finnish music educator Hilkka-Liisa Vuori. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork; I participated in a course on childbirth singing taught by Vuori and interviewed women who had used singing and vocalizing during pregnancy and labour. With the help of new feminist materialisms and feminisms inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's thinking, I suggest that sound and music as vibrations are agential matter that allow us to rethink the dyad between the pregnant person and the foetus. I argue that when the foetus-pregnant person dyad is approached as a constitutive relationality, more than two bodies are always involved.
The goal of this article is to expand the theoretical approaches in feminist research that have explored the relationship between the pregnant person and the foetus in terms of constitutive relationality. I examine new ways of understanding and conceptualizing such a relationship, which may be enabled by the concept of vibration, by focusing on a childbirth-singing method developed and taught by Finnish music educator Hilkka-Liisa Vuori. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork; I participated in a course on childbirth singing taught by Vuori and interviewed women who had used singing and vocalizing during pregnancy and labour. With the help of new feminist materialisms and feminisms inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's thinking, I suggest that sound and music as vibrations are agential matter that allow us to rethink the dyad between the pregnant person and the foetus. I argue that when the foetus-pregnant person dyad is approached as a constitutive relationality, more than two bodies are always involved.
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