Stillness of stillbirth

Death is “a point in a creative synthesis of flows, energies and becomings” (Braidotti 2006.235).

While there are many different cultural rituals associated with death, in the obstetrics’ environment other factors appear to surface exacerbating the loss of a newborn.  Death seems to have a particular force and intensity that contributes to a “pushing away” of some people. This often results in a lonely grieving process for the mother and those around her including students. Stories of neglect are not infrequent. In recent focus groups, students have indicated how they were shocked at times by the distancing of relationships when they expected support and care. 

Students have noticed an avoidance of death when it occurs and question themselves and each other about this practice. Nicola Fouche (2014) explains that even critical care nurses who frequently confront death, struggle with the discomfort, even after many years of exposure to dying patients. In her recent doctoral thesis she recommended that nursing training ought to include a special curricular module on death studies, named as Thanatology.

Braidotti (2001:121) puts forward an affirmative posthuman theory of death claiming that we “need to re-think death, the ultimate subtraction”, and rather to consider the death-life continuum that can blur the divide between life and death. Studying death is a relatively new interdisciplinary area emerging since the 1970s and is “under-examined as a term in critical theory” (Braidotti 2001:128). Braidotti (2001:121) criticizes the “forensic turn” for placing an “over-emphasis on death”. She refers to zoe, a generative force that creates a vital continuum with relationships of interconnectiveness that can be helpful for compassionate care.

The blurring of bodily boundaries is also part of Karen Barad's (2012:218) affirmative philosophy in which she relates materiality to indeterminancies that can be “a celebration of the plentitude of nothingness” rather than a lack or a loss. The image above shows a footprint illustrating a practice carried out by some midwives. This material-discursive practice promotes compassionate care through the mark of the deceased baby’s foot. There is an assemblage created by the baby’s skin-ink-print-paper-becoming that provides a lasting memory keeping alive the loss, rather than being a no-go sign. This image drawn on the Papers App on my iPad illustrates how spacetimemattering can be diffracted with different effects.

Barad, K. 2012. On touching: The inhuman that therefore I am. A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 25:3:206-223.

Braidotti, R. 2006 Transpositions on nomadic ethics. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.

Braidotti, R. 2013. The Posthuman. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Fouche, N. 2014. “We don't handle death well": Implications for a postgraduate nursing curriculum of intensive care nurses' experience of death in ICU. University of Cape Town. https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/13185