Medicalised Birthing Discourse in British Columbia: Biopolitics, Resistance, and Affective Subjectivity

I analyse medicalised birthing in British Columbia to demonstrate contemporary forms of both biopolitical power and resistance. To this end, I offer an approach in which I define the concept of biopolitical resistance using affective subjectivity, with the aim of showing that in addition to appearing as strategic elements in contemporary forms of power affect may also be used to show that practices of resistance emerge from the creative potentials of subjects themselves. In so doing, I hope to contribute to the literature on biopolitics a detailed account of both discursive and non-discursive types of subject formation by focusing on power not merely as a strategic force or effect from above, but also as an ambiguous, non-discursive potentiality that emerges from below in the feelings and sensations of being alive.