Diffractive voices: Pathways to bodies that birth

Women’s and Gender Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of the Western Cape Invite you to a seminar on Diffractive Voices: Pathways to ‘Bodies that Birth’ by Dr Rachelle Chadwick, Sociology, University of Pretoria In this paper I reflect on the methodological and theoretical challenges of undertaking critical qualitative research on diverse South African women’s birth stories. Over nearly ten years I conducted 85 interviews about women’s birth experiences in public and private healthcare sectors. I found that women told birth in multiple (often contradictory) voices that challenged neat distinctions between resistance and compliance, bodies and language, difference and sameness. I reflect here on the various theoretical concepts and methodological tools (including Julia Kristeva’s ‘speaking subject’, poetic methodological devices and the new materialist concept of ‘diffraction’) which enabled me to make sense of these contradictions. In particular, I focus on the concept of ‘diffractive voices’ as an analytical tool enabling the theorization of birth stories as messy, ambivalent, contradictory, embodied and sociomaterial processes. I also highlight the ways in which the concept of ‘diffractive voices’ enables a theorization of intersectional differences as active ‘practices of differings’ (rather than static categories). This paper is thus a reflection on the journey to ‘Bodies that Birth’ highlighting the methodological and theoretical tools I used to trace and engage the polyvocal, embodied and intersectional aspects of birth stories. DATE: 24 April 2019 TIME: 2.00 – 3.30 p.m. VENUE: Seminar Room 1.703, Women’s and Gender Studies, UWC