Always More Than Two: Vibrations, the Foetus, and the Pregnant Person in Childbirth Singing Practices. Issue 2 (3rd April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Leppänen, Taru
• Is Part Of: NORA. Volume 26:Issue 2(2018)
• Page Start: 99
• Page End: 111
• Publication Date: 2018-04-03
• Subjects: Pregnant person -- foetus -- new materialism -- music -- sound; Women's studies -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Periodicals; 305.4
• DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2018.1462255
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0803-8740

Abstract

Abstract: The goal of this article is to expand the theoretical approaches in feminist research that have explored the relationship between the pregnant person and the foetus in terms of constitutive relationality. I examine new ways of understanding and conceptualizing such a relationship, which may be enabled by the concept of vibration, by focusing on a childbirth-singing method developed and taught by Finnish music educator Hilkka-Liisa Vuori. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork; I participated in a course on childbirth singing taught by Vuori and interviewed women who had used singing and vocalizing during pregnancy and labour. With the help of new feminist materialisms and feminisms inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's thinking, I suggest that sound and music as vibrations are agential matter that allow us to rethink the dyad between the pregnant person and the foetus. I argue that when the foetus–pregnant person dyad is approached as a constitutive relationality, more than two bodies are always involved.