SAEKI Eiko (Rutgers University/Waseda University)
“The Birth of Obstetrics and the Boundaries of Personhood in Japan”

Pregnancy and the genesis of life are complex processes that involve the destabilization of what is perceived as an individual’s bodily boundaries, and challenge the modern notion of the subject that is autonomous and self-contained. In political discourses and scholarly works surrounding reproduction, however, there is a tendency to focus solely on the fetus or the body of the pregnant woman. This paper aims to move beyond this framework, by examining the relationship between the changes in the conceptualization of the beginning of life and ideas about the boundary between maternal and fetal bodies in late eighteenth century Japan. This period is when the field of obstetrics emerged in Japan and male doctors began to enter the field of pregnancy and childbirth that had been generally considered as the realm of women. By shedding light on the period of rupture in the knowledge surrounding reproduction, I show how the tension between the positions of the woman and the fetus was negotiated, and consider the implications of the regulatory mechanisms of classification that demarcate the boundary of personhood. Drawing upon cognitive sociological theories on classification, poststructuralist critiques of the modern notion of the body, and an examination of obstetrical textbooks in the period, this paper demonstrates that the new authoritative knowledge produced by obstetricians challenged preexisting notions of the beginning of the life. This knowledge generated the desire (and some ability) to know the internality of female body, which, in turn, contributed to the effort to save the life of the fetus in addition to that of the woman’s. Consequently, this process granted personhood to the fetus, reshaping the conceptualization of the genesis of life and the role of the woman in reproduction.



return to program
return to home