Theoria

Pregnancy, Risk and Biopolitics
On the Threshold of the Living Subject

Lorna Weir

Part of Routledge Publishing’s Series: Transformation: Thinking through Feminism

Pregnancy, Risk and Biopolitics: On the Threshold of the Living Subject (London: Routledge) examines the way mid-twentieth-century medicine unsettled birth as the entry into human status. This book argues that when physicians of the 1930s invented a new kind of time and space— the “perinatal” interval — linking the fetus and newborn just prior to, during, and after birth, they produced a new threshold of entry into human status. This perinatal threshold distinguishes the time and body of the fetus from the pregnant woman, and provides the precondition for late twentieth-century litigation about pregnancy and maternal-fetal conflict. In the 1960s, reducing perinatal mortality rates became the primary objective of maternal and child health care in the global north. Health care providers were expected to routinely screen pregnancies for fetal risk in order to maximize population health after birth. Populations such as Aboriginal peoples that had higher-than-national perinatal mortality rates were targeted by a harsh regime of preventive measures. This book looks at the logic and effects of health governance dedicated to reducing mortality before birth.

Monday, November 20, 2006

7.00pm to 10.00pmat the Victory Café’s Art Bar (upstairs), 581 Markham St, Toronto

Directions: The Victory Café is located one block south of Bloor St. and one block west of Bathurst St. at the corner of Markham St and Lennox St. just south of Honest Eds.

Please R.S.V.P. by Wednesday November 15th to Michael Legris
By phone: 416-736-2100 ext 22078, or email: mlegris@yorku.ca