Distributed Subjects: Losing and Reclaiming Maternal Agency Under the Alienating Conditions of Local Institutional Practice

The analysis in this chapter focuses specifically on women’s embodied subjectivity during childbirth—a complex process characterised by intense experiences of pain and loss of control imposed by both the autonomous physiological process of labour and the problematic model of its institutional regulation. For many women, giving birth is a very dramatic and personally important rite of passage that has a significant impact on how they experience themselves as a new mother and how they handle the care for their baby in the period that follows. Starting from theoretical resources and empirical analyses introduced in the previous chapters, and relying on phenomenological and critical discourse analysis, this chapter explores the complex socio-material networks of institutionalised childbirth—specific constellations of medical encounters, relational patterns, implicit and explicit norms, situated technologies and material aspects of the institutional environment—that crucially shape women’s experiences, integrity and sense of agency during childbirth.