The poetics of labour, birth, and bodies

Abstract

This commentary responds to Bagelman and Gitome’s article, ‘Birthing Across Borders: “Contracting” Reproductive Geographies’, in the context of the growing attention paid to an increasingly diverse set of work on ‘reproductive geographies’. Their call for more South-South stories of birth, and of birth in liminal places, resonates with the growing body of literature exploring dimensions of abortion, fertility, reproductive technology, childbirth, and miscarriage by geographers. Their development of the concept of ‘contraction’ from the collection of accounts of birth in the Dadaab camp illustrates the generative potential of theorising with and from the bodily sensations of labour. The commentary concludes with a discussion of the concept of ‘dilation’ by political theorist Jane Bennett, who in seeking a new conceptual language for affective encounter also draws on the affirmative potential of poetic expression.