Sensitive Bodies: Materialisation,Energetic States and the Balancing of Bodily Boundaries During Pregnancy and Birth

Abstract

Human bodies comprise a range of material and intra-acting entities, such as gross and subtle bodies. While continuous acts of bodily union and separation realise what social actors ultimately consider to be distinct human bodies, pregnancy may be considered an active process of merging or tying together various kinds of more or less material bodies. Although all bodies are involved in transactional exchanges with other entities and the environment and are considered open and porous, pregnant bodies are perceived as exceptionally open, sensitive and ‘hot’. Relying on ethnographic research in Hindu communities of Suriname, this article focuses on my interlocutors’ specific situated knowledge of bodies and matter and pregnancy and birth informed by various ways of knowing. It discusses how the balancing of transactional exchange actively regulates pregnant bodies’ openness and sensitivity, making it necessary to reconsider the notion of bodily boundaries based on energetic states.