Uterine imaginaries, geopolitical economy, and the maternal/unconscious

Abstract

This commentary brings geopolitical economic sensibilities about sexual difference, possession, and the Machine into conversation with Lewis’ cyborgic uterine to make three analytical points. First, transcalar uterine thinking has long existed, seasoned by geopolitical economic circumstance. Uterine thinking in nonmechanized agrarian contexts has circulated primarily through imaginaries of maternal fertility, the material expanse of which exceeds the limits of biological mother and child. The Machine gained authority over the agrarian by feeding off, and replacing, the maternal, of which the uterine is only part. By addressing geopolitical economic difference, Lewis’s analysis would be enriched by an abundance of gestational thinking that operates beyond the Machinic cyborg. My second and related analytical point has to do with how Lewis locates the uterine as a gestational prize that anyone should be able to have; as long as the uterus remains rooted in sexual dimorphism, the male-born body is potentially unfree. Thus, even as she speaks of how gestation need not be contained by a real uterus, she considers its absence in the biological male body a source of potential deprivation that, for freedom’s sake, would best be undone. This undoing would limit the geographical possibilities for queering the maternal. My third point emerges out of the second and has to do with how unconscious desire has historically geographically depended on sexual dimorphism, not the uterus. I’m not sure, but it seems that the interiorized cast of Lewis’ cyborgic uterine makes it difficult to theorize relational attachments—her ‘holding and letting go’.