The body and ontology: Perinatal death and bereavement in the techno-scientific landscape of hospital care

  • Paul Richard Cassidy Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Keywords: Perinatal death, stillbirth, pregnancy loss, bereavement, hospital care, ontology, motherhood, personhood, qualitative research.

Abstract

This study takes the body (of mother and child), the technoscientific hospital landscape and professional ritual as the locus of an endeavour to understand the embodied experience of perinatal death, in order to better comprehend how alternate understandings and ontologies of motherhood, personhood and bereavement emerge during care enactments.  Grounded in a descriptive and ethnographic approach the research analyses data from the entries of 22 members of a pregnancy loss support forum and 10 narrative style interviews. The research traces embodied experience from pregnancy, through diagnosis to the spatialised experience of the hospital, including the birth, postmortem contact and disposal of the corpse. Bounded by the sudden destruction of ontological security many of these women experience an existential crisis that results in a destructed stigmatised self. The research explores how overly medicalised obstetric care enacts understandings of perinatal death and bereavement that further problematizes postmortem relationships, creating toxic identities and embodied selves. Conversely, woman-centred midwifery that takes relational and social understandings as a basis for care can create the material conditions of possibility for a restoration of confidence in carnal self and a reconstruction of social bonds and order. Assembled through practice, discourse and policy, these bodies are individually, socially and politically enacted, but they are also multiple, mutable and enfolded assemblages of nature and culture. The research proposes that healthcare practice would benefit by considering natural stillbirths, just as contemporary obstetrics advocates natural childbirth.

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Author Biography

Paul Richard Cassidy, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Paul Cassidy BA MPhil, holds a Masters in Research Methodology in Social Science from the University Complutense of Madrid (2014) and a degree in Business Studies & Marketing from Waterford Institute of Technology (1995), where he also lectured as an assistant professor of marketing from 1995 to 1997, before working in private consulting, where he specialized in research and strategic planning, working on scale surveys, strategic development plans and community consultation processes. He is currently the research director at Umamanita, a non-profit organization that supports parents after pregnancy and neonatal death, where he has undertaken the first national research program to address the issue in Spain. He contributes to the scientific committee of the International Stillbirth Alliance. His main research fields are pregnancy loss; processes of grief; death, dying and related rituals; medical sociology and technology.


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Published
2015-08-20
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How to Cite
Cassidy P. R. (2015). The body and ontology: Perinatal death and bereavement in the techno-scientific landscape of hospital care. Teknokultura. Journal of Digital Culture and Social Movements, 12(2), 285-316. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_TK.2015.v12.n2.49668