Tending the margins: learnings from the birthing body as a membrane

This paper, grounded in a birthing body, explores the ecology of birth by contrasting the internalphysiological systems with the external socio-cultural ones. I propose that the birthing body is amembrane between these systems offering a space of encounter and access to other forms ofknowing. One of the objects of knowing is what Nora Bateson (2021) calls the ongoing vitality, a formof communication between organisms in living systems. I argue that ongoing vitality can not only beperceived but its perception can support the actualisation of healthy possibilities present at themargins of internal physiological and the external socio-cultural systems.I situate my brief inquiry in the cultural logic of a “world-sense” as opposed to a “worldview” andspeak about two forms of self-awareness, conceptual self-awareness and embodied self-awareness. I extendthis to the agency of objects and circularity of affects it affords (Ahmed, 2010) and emphasise thatobjects too have a role to play in embodied self-awareness. As Amanda Astrid Blake (2024) states,sensation is the language of life. The knowing that comes from embodied self-awareness finds itslocus at the margins of the birthing body, a permeable porous space that contains at least threepossibilities: it is a space of mutual attunement, a space of not knowing, and a space of invitation.Using the membrane logic developed by Neimanis (2017), I conclude by saying that acceptingdifference and promoting interpermeation – allowing the other to flow through – support the birthof life.