Bodies looking into BodiesMA Thesis (2022-23)Representations of the pregnant body, whether public or private, are always political, as to represent is always to point toward something and away from something else.
My Thesis research started from a very distinct feeling of sensitivity or irritability about how the pregnant body is being looked at, and how it has been governed through that gaze. Considering how the pregnant body has been represented over time until today, my attempt was to show how the specific visual strategies of abstracting, cropping and zooming affected never only representations of the pregnant body, but also the pregnant body itself.
Looking specifically at how these strategies are applied in the technology of the Sonogram, my goal was a critical reconsideration of postphenomenological philosophy of technology. In this, I argued that the role of agents of technology can not be simplified and reduced to mediators of human-world relationships. Viewing technologies of visualization such as the sonogram as mere mediators falls short of the complex entanglement of bodies, gender, politics, and technology. Instead, I the multi-perspectives directed towards and from within the pregnant body allow for a reading of the body as a matter of interpretation.
The question remains: how can such complex relations and their interpretation be made present in a more diverse representation of the pregnant body? Considering representation as the base of what counts as real is problematic when looking at pregnant bodies. Because these bodies are defined by a presence that is (at least at the beginning of pregnancy) invisible to the outside, most representations focus on visualizing that inside. The “body around” is rarely seen, at least never fully, visually proving the differentiating feature which renders the pregnant body invisible in its own representations.
I tried to show how this invisibility has supported the exertion of political powers over these bodies in the past, and how a reinterpretation of this invisibility could aid the pregnant body in regaining political agency instead, through its decision not to be seen.