Thinking geographically with wombs

Abstract

How can we think geographically with wombs, especially in relation to labour? This is my reading of the question posed by Sophie Lewis in this article ‘Cyborg uterine geography’. The article is challenging not just because the author sets an ambitious task but also because it addresses ‘messy’ bodies long associated with femininity and because it contains terms, phrases and theories that will likely be unfamiliar to some readers. Woven into these theoretical ideas are some helpful examples of how geographers might use the uterus to deromanticize care and social production and instead proliferate that which is often considered to be queer and counter-intuitive. These examples could be developed in future work. So too could how space and place matter to the uterus, and how discourses of the ‘bad’ mother might add weight to arguments about deromanticizing care and social reproduction.