Rationalism and the disembodiment of modern childbirth: the case for an ecology of childbirth

Abstract

The paper proposes a genealogy of the biomedical paradigm surroundingchildbirth, with the aim of deconstructing the principles of rationalism that led to theobjectification of the body and to the consequent commodification of birth. We intend todemonstrate how such a conception of the body and of sensibility determines the birthprocess, which leads us to consider it an event that is relational in nature. Methodologically,this deconstruction is carried out through a critical-descriptive genealogy of the theoreticalassumptions of the rationalist conception of the body. By developing the concept ofecology of childbirth, we intend to call into question this relational nature of the body andto recover the value of corporeality and embodiment as a language of proximity, withina theoretical framework of the ethics of difference. This vindication of the ecologicalrelational nature of sensibility has the potential to establish a dynamic of responsibilityand cooperation capable of subverting the rationalist logic of control and the dominion ofthe current biomedical paradigm.