Telling Bodies Performing Birth - (Popular Cultures, Everyday Lives) by Della Pollock (Paperback)

About the Book

Considering issues such as pain and fertility, and exploring both the language of medical discourse and the silence of personal mystery, she reveals the numerous ways in which giving birth is narrated in the contemporary U.S. Pollock draws on cultural criticism, performance studies, and narrative theory to unpack this long-ignored genre.

Book Synopsis

Birth stories, Della Pollock tells us, "are everywhere and nowhere," permeating and haunting our everyday lives. In this remarkable volume Pollock explores the myriad ways in which men and women recount the ritual performance of giving birth.

Many of these stories, Pollock observes, rise out of the depths of terror, flirting with disaster only to end with a profound sense of relief at what medical discourse calls a "good outcome." Others represent pain, make counterclaims on reproductive technologies, and suggest complex associations between maternity, sexuality, and body politics in the contemporary United States. Pollock retells stories about some of the injustices that structure giving and telling birth--finding there a reckoning with the unknown and unknowable.

Focusing on the performances of birth stories, Pollock writes an intimate ethnography: an account of listening "body to body" to stories that press the borders of cultural critique with virtuosity, possibility, desire, and risk. She draws on cultural criticism, performance studies, and narrative theory to unpack this long-ignored practice. Most striking, however, are the stories presented here: unsanctioned, bold, fragmentary, and often furtive, they both unnerve and inspire even as they realize and resist cultural norms.

From the Back Cover

"Birth stories", Della Pollock tells us, "are everywhere and nowhere", permeating and haunting our everyday lives. In this remarkable volume Pollock explores the myriad ways in which men and women recount the ritual performance of giving birth.

Many of these stories, Pollock observes, rise out of the depths' of terror, flirting with disaster only to end with a profound sense of relief at what medical discourse calls a "good outcome". Others represent pain, make counterclaims on reproductive technologies, and suggest complex associations between maternity, sexuality, and body politics in the contemporary United States. Pollock retells stories about some of the injustices that structure giving and telling birth -- finding there a reckoning with the unknown and unknowable.

Focusing on the performances of birth stories, Pollock writes an intimate ethnography: an account of listening "body to body" to stories that press the borders of cultural critique with virtuosity, possibility, desire, and risk. She draws on cultural criticism, performance studies, and narrative theory to unpack this long-ignored practice. Most striking, however, are the stories presented here: unsanctioned, bold, fragmentary, and often furtive, they both unnerve and inspire even as they realize and resist cultural norms.

Review Quotes

Della Pollock's writing seduces us into new realms of theory, experience and narrative until we cannot escape the importance of 'telling bodies, performing birth'. This is a big and beautiful book to be read by one and all.

About the Author

Della Pollock is associate professor of communication studies and director of the University Program in Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is coeditor of the journal Cultural Studies and editor ofExceptional Spaces: Essays in Performance and History.