'Where do I come from?' Interrogating imagined childbirth within a sexuality education museum exhibit. Issue 3 (4th May 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Turner, Michelle
• Is Part Of: Sex education. Volume 23:Issue 3(2023)
• Page Start: 334
• Page End: 344
• Publication Date: 2023-05-04
• Subjects: Multimodal critical discourse analysis -- science museums -- sex education -- pregnancy -- childbirth -- pedagogy; Sex instruction -- Periodicals; Sex (Psychology) -- Periodicals; 613.9071
• DOI: 10.1080/14681811.2022.2087178
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-1811

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper critically explores the pedagogy of Science World in creating disciplined, birthing patients within the sexuality education BodyWorks gallery on display in Vancouver, Canada. Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, I explore the ways in which power/knowledge circulates to regulate and de-agentalise bodies in a science museum encounter. I consider the regimes of truth that emerge regarding the good/right/correct way to give birth and to be a woman: that is, as White, heteronormative, slender, conforming, always a mother, but and mostly a uterus. In exposing regimes of truth within the encountered curriculum of the science museum, the hope is that sexuality educators might (re)consider space for the unruly and awe-ful within pedagogies of childbirth.