In an edited extract from her longer essay, Reproductive Wilderness: Decolonising the womb from the anatomical and biocapitalistic regimes of architecture, Shonali Shetty looks at the mythological, cultural and political hegemonies that have governed perceptions of gestation, gender and motherhood.
The pandemic has been an important torch for the politics of gender. Women were thrown into outdated gender roles of childbearing and rearing. Heteronormative homes turned into spaces of violence (Boserup et al., 2020; Ertan et al., 2020) reminding us of the fragility within which the construct of the family is housed. An investigation into the role that architecture in this process plays an urgent matter in making and breaking such constructs. Studying reproduction is an interdisciplinary (England et al., 2020) and trans-species field embedded in biopolitics. Yet, it largely stays within niche feminist discourse. Through my embodied experience of pregnancy and birth, I aim to highlight the entanglements of the womb in gestation. Navigating through biology, humanities, and architecture, I emphasise the role of architecture in circulating fluids of the reproduction economy. I refrain from narrating this story through the Capitolocene or Anthropocene. Instead, focusing on the Chthulucene,1 where non-humans are central to my story.
Laying the foundation for the womb is a matter of complex materiality.
The womb, in this context, is a more-than-human space, giving room to the stranger, Xeno,2 and its mutational politics. The architecture of the womb, our first home, is a hollow structure filled with a mixture of water, salt, electrolytes, and later sugar, scraps of DNA, fats, proteins, blood, piss, and shit (Lewis, 2019, no pagination). Mammals apart, a seed that holds the embryo of a plant and the expanding uterus of the hen that stretches to push the egg out of the cloaca are each renditions of the gestating womb’s temporality, tactility, and fluidity in nature. Laying the foundation for the womb is a matter of complex materiality.
Yet, the solidity with which philosophers, scientists, and artists have speculated about the womb has grounded it firmly in several cultural and biological narratives (Adair, 1995).3 It is this sociocultural, political, economical, and human and non-human entanglement of the womb in anatomy and architecture that I aim to unfold in this paper.
The publication of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (1543) by Andreas Vesalius marked an important moment for anatomy in Western Europe (Zampieri et al., 2015). Vesalius collaborated with artists and presented cadavers in landscapes depicting nature and human emotions. Rooting the human body in its structural essence and hence its anatomy. He was the first to depict the female anatomy differentiated from the male anatomy through reproductive organs (Fig. 1).
Anatomical theatres opened in Europe to share this knowledge of the body through public dissections (Marre and Villet, 2020). Leiden’s Theatrum Anatomicum is a good spatial allegory for what is to unfold in anatomy and architecture in the centuries to come (Fig. 2). A circular amphitheatre with six tiers around a rotatable table. People sat around the table in hierarchical order. The dissector sat on a throne. The bodies that were brought in were those of criminals.4 The tiers were decorated with skeletons of animals and birds (Boer et al., 2018).
The anatomical shift of the sixteenth century coincides with primitive accumulation and land enclosures that resulted in the loss of the commons. Women’s bodies got reduced to their anatomy of reproduction [and] were put to work to reproduce the workforce.
The anatomical shift of the sixteenth century coincides with primitive accumulation and land enclosures that resulted in the loss of the commons. Leading to a loss of work for women and children. As women were less likely to become vagabonds, they became susceptible to providing cheap labour in small scale industries that sprouted around Europe. During this, women’s bodies got reduced to their anatomy of reproduction. Women were put to work to reproduce the workforce, which was instrumental in the becoming of a capitalistic economy5 (Federici, 2004, p. 71).
Fig. 3 - Title page of Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rigorous collection and classification of data took place, especially in the life sciences (Madrazo, 1994). Even though Vesalius’s title page bore the image of a dissected female body, the ongoing collection of anatomical knowledge at this time was intended for the education of male doctors. Women were not asked for their knowledge about their embodied experience. It was considered unscientific. Hence the history of female anatomy is primarily a male history or no documented history at all6 (The University of Groningen Library, 2021). (Fig. 3)
Hence the history of female anatomy is primarily a male history or no documented history at all.
By the eighteenth century the word “generation” that applied to living beings and the generation of minerals, brewing, and baking was replaced by reproduction (Muri, 2010; Park, 2006, p. 86). Transforming the womb from the site of generation to that of production. From a language of creation (with biblical origins) to that of manufacturing (Muri, 2010, p. 20). Not everybody’s womb was welcome to join the line of production. In distant lands and settler colonies, the idea of the nuclear family and reproduction through heteronormative relationships was idealised and made a symbol of whiteness (Lawrence, 2000, Theobald, 2019). Creating hierarchies of lesser and more important bodies and populations (Tallbear, 2018, pp. 145–47). The word reproduction is especially important here in the production of the same, as production meant making something new.
By the eighteenth century the word “generation” that applied to living beings and the generation of minerals, brewing, and baking was replaced by reproduction transforming the womb from the site of generation to that of production.
It was not until the nineteenth century that monogamous marriage was advocated, and sexual difference was codified as anatomical truth (Preciado and Benderson, 2013, p. 70). Rapid advancement in comparative anatomy was also seen during the time. Wolfgang Goethe’s conception of the primordial plant Urpflanze (1787) was an important landmark. He envisioned a master plant composing all the anatomical parts he found during his stay in Italy (Steadman, 2008, p. 24).
Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, who was teaching at the École Polytechnique, felt the need to ground architecture in general principles like that of other disciplines. Which led to his architectural classification, published in 1796 (Madrazo, 1994) in which the archetype of a building can be a combination of various parts represented as a system. The lines and dots in Durand’s drawings are similar in thickness. Image 4 is a representation of classified edifice, creating a modular yet homogeneous aesthetic that was a compilation of structural parts that belonged to different time periods and cultures. Thus wiping out any difference in context or culture. Durand’s classification marked the beginning of systematised, singular and homogeneous archetypes which contributed to the stylistic confusion of the nineteenth century were historical styles were revived and adopted. Both colonial and neoclassical architectures are a result of such modular aesthetics (Steadman, 2008, p. 26; Santiago Faria, 2014) (Fig. 4)
Fig. 4 - Louis Durand’s architectural classification, 1800.
Michel Foucault marks this shift from a market of jurisdiction, based on sovereign justice, to veridiction, verified by a set of rules, as the beginning of economic liberalism. Exchange in this market defined the value of things (Foucault and Senellart, 2008, pp. 35, 47). Population and production became essential ingredients in this new economy. The truth was based on this non-inclusive, contextless accumulation and classification of Eurocentric knowledge (Foucault and Senellart, 2008. p. 35). In this money-based economy preceding feudalism and mercantile economy, Foucault situated the birth of biopolitics. During this time, disciplinary architectures such as prisons, schools, hospitals, and barracks were instituted alongside scientific texts, statistical tables, demographic calculations, and schedules for regulating reproduction (Preciado and Benderson, 2013, p. 68), leading to the conception of the generic womb and generic spaces that were based on a set of rules derived from scientific knowledge held by men who were now producers and mechanics of reproduction (Muri, 2010).
In the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, the womb went lower in the hierarchy of functions than more vital organs like the heart and the brain. Women moved to the periphery of anatomy, and in the architecture of both public and private spaces.
Throughout nineteenth century Europe, functionalism7 added new layers of rationalisation to the already established hierarchical orders. The logic for this was derived from developmental and evolutionary biology. Two biological theories from this time continue to influence architectural thought to this day: the division of physiological labour and the origin of species. Physiological division of labour was a theory of ontogenesis that was used to hierarchise based on anatomical complexity within the body of an organism.8 While this theory has been wiped out of biological textbooks, the theory of morphological differentiation, which is very close to physiological division of labour, is still present in the way developmental biology persists (D’Hombres, 2012). Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution focused on efficiency and competition as key ingredients for survival. Louis Sullivan almost directly applied this thought to develop what became the ethos of modern architecture: “form follows function” (Steadman, 2008, p. 56). In the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, the womb went lower in the hierarchy of functions than more vital organs like the heart and the brain. Women moved to the periphery of anatomy,9 and in the architecture of both public and private spaces (Puwar, 2004, pp. 15–16).
Fig. 5 - Haeckel, E. 1904. Kunstformen der Natur.
In the nineteenth to twentieth centuries, as travelling colonial expeditions increased, a wider variety of plants and animals were discovered. Anatomists collected glass jars that showed the reach of individual scientists. This signified the power of each individual country. An essential moment in applied arts was the 1904 drawings of Haeckel in Kunstformen der Natur inspired by microscopic views of exotic and unseen plants and animals, which influenced the art nouveau movement in Europe (Steadman, 2008, xv). It is representative of the tamed scientific menagerie of exotic plants above and below the ground, in water and in distant lands. It was also during this time that animals joined the production line. The reproduction of animals and proteins to feed the growing human population was railed into bio-capitalistic regimes. This marked the beginning of a new kind of architecture, which included greenhouses, poultry, and dairy farms that optimised space for the production and reproduction of animals as a commodity in a bio-capitalistic society. Once again reproducing (the same) only those that were deemed efficient. Excluding and wiping out several species of chicken, cow, plants, and, even more interestingly, creating new breeds with technological interventions based solely on their efficiency to reproduce. (Fig. 5)
The womb and architecture continue to share an epistemological history. One that is evolutionary and anatomical.
In the later part of the twentieth century a new kind of common ground between anatomy and architecture was found. Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene (1976), an evolutionary theory based on memetics. Memes require a balance between repetition and variation (Steadman, 2008, p. 245). Growth in this context of mimetic is the ability of architecture to mutate and transform by being permeable to new and variant actors in space. In architecture, such mutating forms took incidence in software and generative programs. The most notable example is Greg Lynn’s embryological house 1998-2001. Lynn used vectors that were then mutated through generative software into embryonic forms (Steadman, 2008, p. 245).
The womb and architecture continue to share an epistemological history. One that is evolutionary and anatomical. With the advancements of new technologies such as full surrogacy, IVF treatments, and genetically engineered artificial wombs, the womb will continue to be caught in the tension between the generic (creating more of the same) and generative (becoming a site for varied mutations). The questions remain: where (in whose bodies, politics, and economics) will the womb reside? And who (which variants/actors/genes) will form the materiality of the womb as a generative space? (Fig. 6)
The questions remain: where (in whose bodies, politics, and economics) will the womb reside? And who (which variants/actors/genes) will form the materiality of the womb as a generative space?
Fig. 6 - Greg Lynn’s Embryological House.
If we take a step back and look at the mythological origins of the word Gaia, meaning earth personified in Greek mythology, Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life, whose equal, Uranus (sky, heaven), covers her on every side. The sky stretches to meet every edge, corner, and dent of the earth and gives birth to mountains, sea, and everything else. I find this mythical personification of binary roles problematic. Making earth the maternal base or ground that all life walks over and the sky the untouchable and unreachable paternal is a personification that is far from equal.
Making earth the maternal base or ground that all life walks over and the sky the untouchable and unreachable paternal is a personification that is far from equal.
For a minute, we might consider both the sky and the earth as maternal, working together to hold and envelop all life within, the river, the beings, and the gases. The womb hence consists of everything held together between the earth and the sky. The earth provides nutrients for life, the sky, the much-needed sunshine, and the atmosphere. It is hard in this case to distinguish between the sun or the earth as a nutrient provider as the plants that are grown on Earth would not live without the carbon dioxide and sunlight for photosynthesis. So to say that the earth is the mother is the provider of all life on earth is to be caught in the duality of the maternal versus the paternal and a desperate desire to differentiate.
Since the maternal has always been capable of divisibility through reproduction, the mother, [Sophie Lewis] says, was never considered an individual.
Haraway swaps homeostasis with symbiogenesis, rejecting the privileges of human exceptionalism, which is built around fixating on our identities based on similarities and differences, and shifting our attention to our sympoetic body (2016, p. 33). In her book Full Surrogacy Now, Sophie Lewis highlights that human exceptionalism is derived from the idea of individualism (2019, p. 3), focusing on the word individual, which is derived from the Latin word in-divisible. Since the maternal has always been capable of divisibility through reproduction, the mother, she says, was never considered an individual.
To read the full essay, see Spatial Folders: Extraction A Trans-Scalar inquiry (2023). Spatial Folders is a thematic periodical published by the faculty of Master Interior Architecture: Research + Design (MIARD) program at the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. The publication is distributed by Jesse Presse.
Bio
Shonali Shetty is an interdisciplinary designer and researcher with a keen interest in xeno- and feminist space making. Shonali’s work was exhibited and published at Dutch Design Week, Ventura, Dezeen, Diseña, Zeitung Magazine and Metropolis M. Her work was short-listed for Dezeen Awards 2020, Green product and concept awards 2021. She is a member of faculty at the Hogeschool Utrecht, engaged in teaching and developing content on inclusive and circular design strategies.
Notes
1 Unlike either the Anthropocene or Capitalocene, the Chthulucene is made up of ongoing multispecies stories and practices (Haraway, 2016, p. 55)
2 “Xenofam” favouring outward-looking solidarity with the alien, the foreign, and the figure of the stranger, over restrictive solidarity with the familiar, the similar, and the figure of the compatriot (Hester, 2018, pp. 65–6)
3 Plato considered the womb wild and moving all throughout the woman’s body (Mulvey, 1992). Paul Klee’s painting of the pandora’s box suggests female genitalia as a site of pleasure and danger at the same time (Colomina and Bloomer, 1992)
4 Public dissection of the body of residents and citizens of Venice was prohibited (Ghosh, 2015)
5 “The disappearance of commons, removed from women a place of subsistence, autonomy and sociality The lack of land and sustenance gave birth to cheap and alternate labour markets like in the textile industry leading to the revival of a new kind of wage based slavery. During which time a woman’s body was turned into a work machine for the purposes of the reproduction of the workforce.” (Federici, 2004, p. 71)
6 Katharine Park illustrates that the human body’s dissection, including that of women, was conducted at churches in Italy much before Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, 1543. She highlights that the caesarean was the frst kind of autopsy on the body of a dead pregnant woman done to extract the unborn foetus (Park, 2006, p. 15)
7 “[…]functionalism is the equation of the beautiful with the useful or with the expression of usefulness, the idea that an artefact which is well-designed and adapted for its purpose will be seen to be beautiful through a recognition of this fitness for use.” (Steadman, 2008. p. 9)
8 Naturalist Henri Milne Edwards argues that this structural simplicity in lower animals does not mean poorness of functions but rather deconcentrating of functions (D’Hombres, 2012). In Molecular Feminisms: Biology, Becomings, and Life in the Lab Deboleena Roy refers to Margulis bacterial cells as the “smartest cells”, implying that a unicellular organism cannot be considered an anatomically simple organism (Roy, 2018, p. 92)
9 This is inferred from conversations with anatomists in the Netherlands where the department is titled “Anatomy + Embryology”. The womb in gestation is still seen as a separate or an “add on” to the anatomy of the body (de Ruiter, 2022; Khoehler, 2022)
Image Reference List
Fig. 1 - Vesalius, A. 1543. De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem. Basel: Joannes Oporinus.
Fig. 2 - Swanenburg, W. I, van ‘t Woudt, J. C. 1610. Theatrum Anatomicum. [Engraving]. At: Leiden: Museum Boerhaave
Fig. 3 - Vesalius, A. 1543. De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem. Basel: Joannes Oporinus.
Fig. 4 - Durand, J. 1802. Précis des leçons d'architecture: données à l'Ecole Polytechnique. Paris.
Fig. 5 - Haeckel, E. 1904. Kunstformen der Natur
Fig. 6 - Lynn, G. ca. 1999. Embryological House: Size “A” eggs [Online]. [Accessed 27 April 2023]. [online]
