IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v45y2013i5p1087-1104.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Placental Surfaces and the Geographies of Bodily Interiors

Author

Listed:
  • Rachel Colls

    (Department of Geography, Durham University, Science Laboratories, Durham DH1 3LE, England)

  • Maria Fannin

    (School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1SS, England)

Abstract

Within geographical research on ‘the body’, a focus on the surfaces of bodies has been useful for considering how body boundaries, most often implied to begin and end at the skin, (de)limit, (de)regulate, and (de)stabilise what we come to know as ‘a body’. Such work draws attention to how meaning is inscribed ‘upon’ such surfaces and on the fluids that move across, within, and through those surfaces: for example blood, breast milk, and excrement. This paper, however, considers the potential for thinking geographically about interior bodily surfaces by engaging with the placenta. The placenta is a temporary organ that forms in a woman's body only during pregnancy and whose purpose is to mediate the flow of substances between a woman's body and the foetus. It is often considered to have two surfaces, the maternal and foetal surface, or to be ‘a’ surface in and of itself. Our intention is to think geographically ‘with’ ‘the placenta’ in order to focus on what interior surfaces can ‘do’ rather than ‘what they mean’. In so doing our contribution is twofold. Firstly, we will focus on the ‘resurfacing’ of the placenta when it moves outside of the body to be placed upon other (bodily) surfaces, taken back inside the body of origin, or put to use in research. This is significant for highlighting the specific mobilities and temporalities of interior bodily surfaces. Secondly, we consider the theoretical and ethical significance of the placenta for geography by engaging with Luce Irigaray's account of the placental relation between mother and foetus understood as a space of mediation or ‘space between two’. In particular we are interested in considering the geographical potential of the sexed specificities of interior body surfaces, or their ‘morpho-logics’, for understandings of relationality, between self and other, and body and world; in short, we work with the placenta as a ‘relational organ’ in order to uncover new and potentially enlivening ethical spaces of exchange.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Colls & Maria Fannin, 2013. "Placental Surfaces and the Geographies of Bodily Interiors," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(5), pages 1087-1104, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:5:p:1087-1104
    DOI: 10.1068/a44698
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a44698
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a44698?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brown, Nik & Machin, Laura & McLeod, Danae, 2011. "Immunitary bioeconomy: The economisation of life in the international cord blood market," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(7), pages 1115-1122, April.
    2. Kent, Julie, 2008. "The fetal tissue economy: From the abortion clinic to the stem cell laboratory," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(11), pages 1747-1756, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Avril Maddrell & Veronica della Dora, 2013. "Crossing Surfaces in Search of the Holy: Landscape and Liminality in Contemporary Christian Pilgrimage," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(5), pages 1105-1126, May.
    2. Jeffries, Jayne M., 2018. "Negotiating acquired spinal conditions: Recovery with/in bodily materiality and fluids," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 61-69.
    3. Cristina Larrea-Killinger & Araceli Muñoz & Arantza Begueria & Jaume Mascaró-Pons, 2020. "Body Representations of Internal Pollution: The Risk Perception of the Circulation of Environmental Contaminants in Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women in Spain," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-20, September.
    4. Isla Forsyth & Hayden Lorimer & Peter Merriman & James Robinson, 2013. "Guest Editorial," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(5), pages 1013-1020, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Markus M. Bugge & Teis Hansen & Antje Klitkou, 2016. "What Is the Bioeconomy? A Review of the Literature," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-22, July.
    2. Nik Brown & Sarah Nettleton, 2018. "Economic imaginaries of the Anti-biosis: between ‘economies of resistance’ and the ‘resistance of economies’," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-8, December.
    3. Petersen, Alan, 2013. "From bioethics to a sociology of bio-knowledge," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 264-270.
    4. Sotiropoulou, Irene & Deutz, Pauline, 2021. "Understanding the bioeconomy: a new sustainability economy in British and European public discourse," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 10(4), December.
    5. Carmen Priefer & Juliane Jörissen & Oliver Frör, 2017. "Pathways to Shape the Bioeconomy," Resources, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-23, February.
    6. Machin, Laura L. & Brown, Nik & McLeod, Danae, 2012. "Giving to receive? The right to donate in umbilical cord blood banking for stem cell therapies," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 104(3), pages 296-303.
    7. Sanz-Hernández, Alexia & Jiménez-Caballero, Paula & Zarauz, Irene, 2022. "Gender and women in scientific literature on bioeconomy: A systematic review," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:5:p:1087-1104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.