A Scenography of Inscriptions and Intangibles in the Birthing Room

Inscriptions on graph paper, on monitors and on various screens
are ubiquitous in the birthing room; they reassure, worry, beep,
light up and inform protocols. According to Latour (1985) their
presence is not a result of a carefully planned logical choice, but
of a legacy of mustering allies and convincing alignments. Using
Barad’s (2007) framework of agential realism, this paper explores the
notion of intra-actions between objects and agencies of observation
in the phenomenon of birth, using a socio-political and historical
configuration. It presents some surprising accounts of obstetrics
and gynaecology and showcases how historical inscriptions and
instruments materialized today’s birthing practices. It then presents
how, upon entering the birthing room, one notices that the presence
of instruments and inscriptions overshadows many other powerful
actors at play. These other actors, such as atmosphere, presence,
hormonal systems, memories, consciousness, relationship to pain,
the sense of self are intangible and often not sufficiently attended
to during childbirth even though literature shows their critical role
for positive birth outcomes. Using post Actor Network Theory and
medical scenographies (Neumann, 2021), this paper attempts to start
an inquiry around the role of one of these intangible actors in the
birthing room, namely the symphony of hormones (Odent, 2018),
and explore their dynamic, porous, multiple nature (Mol, 2002;
Neimanis, 2021). It then concludes by inquiring whether identifying
the intra-actions of a fuller spectrum of actors in the room, both
inscribed and intangible, invites the co-emergence (Ettinger, 2006) of
new layers of actors and thus reconfigures the phenomenon of birth
and its transformative potential.