{"id":3451,"date":"2022-09-08T10:00:26","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T09:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=3451"},"modified":"2022-08-26T15:25:38","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T14:25:38","slug":"creative-ferment-abortion-and-reproductive-agency-in-bessie-heads-personal-choices-trilogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2022\/09\/08\/creative-ferment-abortion-and-reproductive-agency-in-bessie-heads-personal-choices-trilogy\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Creative Ferment\u2019: Abortion and Reproductive Agency in Bessie Head\u2019s Personal Choices Trilogy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Article Summary by Caitlin Stobie<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Using original archival research, this article examines representations of abortion in three novels by Bessie Head, an author who was born in South Africa and lived in Botswana for most of her life. I argue that Head documents both changing attitudes to terminations of pregnancy and dramatic environmental, medical, and sociopolitical developments during southern Africa\u2019s liberation struggles. Instead of using discourse from contemporary debates about freedom and choice, which are often polarised, I use the term \u2019reproductive agency\u2019 to refer to a continuum of ethical presentness, rooted in considering women\u2019s desires.\u00a0My literary analysis explicitly concentrates on Head\u2019s biological imagery of growth and separation and how this ruptures repronormative discourse underpinning colonial expansion in southern Africa. Adapting new materialist theories with postcolonial scholarship, I coin the term &#8216;queer vitality&#8217; to argue that abortion involves both tragedy and desire, and that southern African feminist fiction functions as postcolonial theory when the concept of reproductive agency is understood to encompass both individual and collective desires. In Head\u2019s words, in her creative worlds, abortion does not signal the ending of a life, but rather a plethora of new possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>Listen to the author discussing the article below:<\/p>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-3451-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/files\/2022\/08\/Stobie-Caitlin-E-\u2018Creative-Ferment-abortion-and-reproductive-agency-in-Bessie-Heads-Personal-Choices-trilogy.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/files\/2022\/08\/Stobie-Caitlin-E-\u2018Creative-Ferment-abortion-and-reproductive-agency-in-Bessie-Heads-Personal-Choices-trilogy.mp3\">https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/files\/2022\/08\/Stobie-Caitlin-E-\u2018Creative-Ferment-abortion-and-reproductive-agency-in-Bessie-Heads-Personal-Choices-trilogy.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<h5>Read <a href=\"https:\/\/mh.bmj.com\/content\/48\/3\/298\"><strong>the full paper<\/strong><\/a> on the <em>Medical Humanities<\/em> Journal website.<\/h5>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3459 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/files\/2022\/09\/Stobie-Caitlin-E-\u2018Creative-Ferment-abortion-and-reproductive-agency-in-Bessie-Heads-Personal-Choices-trilogy-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Caitlin E. Stobie Photo\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/files\/2022\/09\/Stobie-Caitlin-E-\u2018Creative-Ferment-abortion-and-reproductive-agency-in-Bessie-Heads-Personal-Choices-trilogy-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/files\/2022\/09\/Stobie-Caitlin-E-\u2018Creative-Ferment-abortion-and-reproductive-agency-in-Bessie-Heads-Personal-Choices-trilogy-250x250.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/>Caitlin Stobie is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Leeds. Her monograph, <\/em>Abortion Ecologies in Southern African Fiction: Transforming Reproductive Agency<em>, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic in 2023.\u00a0<\/em><!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Article Summary by Caitlin Stobie Using original archival research, this article examines representations of abortion in three novels by Bessie Head, an author who was born in South Africa and lived in Botswana for most of her life. I argue that Head documents both changing attitudes to terminations of pregnancy and dramatic environmental, medical, and [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2022\/09\/08\/creative-ferment-abortion-and-reproductive-agency-in-bessie-heads-personal-choices-trilogy\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15028],"tags":[15044],"class_list":["post-3451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal-announcements","tag-research"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>\u2018Creative Ferment\u2019: Abortion and Reproductive Agency in Bessie Head\u2019s Personal Choices Trilogy - Medical Humanities<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Caitlin Stobie explores representations of abortion in three novels by Bessie Head in today&#039;s article summary.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=3451\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Creative Ferment\u2019: Abortion and Reproductive Agency in Bessie Head\u2019s Personal Choices Trilogy - 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