Pedagogy of the Womb

• In Event: What’s Love Got to Do With It? Shifting Womanist Pedagogies and Praxes

Abstract

I am concerned about how the womb can be used in reading the world. The womb is innately powerful—the origin of existence and being. It is an intricate tangle of the biological, historical, physical, emotional, spiritual, and political. I am drawn to the womb because I am drawn to women of color. My passion for her is an awakening to this work (Clark, 1983).

In Towards an Epistemology of the Brown Body, Cindy Cruz (2006) suggests that our epistemology derives from the bodies of our mothers and grandmothers. The brown body reclaims and resists. The brown body is the embodiment of racialized subjectivity. The brown body is critical practice and praxis. I build upon Cruz’s work and suggest that we look to the womb as a specific site of theorization for women of color. As intersections of race, sex, class, culture, religion, and citizenship become inscribed on the racialized female body, the womb details the struggle and contradiction of our existence. I turn to the womb, a place we each depart from, to discover processes of response and (re)production to the world around us. The following paper explores the womb as a place of theory and practice conceptualized as, pedagogy of the womb. Pedagogy of the womb is a project, practice, and process that struggle through ways we can address legacies of marginalization, disempowerment, and injustice as agents of change. Pedagogy of the womb is the investment in space, place, and time. It is the sharp reminder—through physicality and visibility—that growth and change is possible and expansive but vulnerable.

I partnered with radical women of color to birth pedagogy of the womb (Anzaldúa & Moraga, 1983; Tintiangco-Cubales, 2005; Delgado Bernal, et al., 2006; Anzaldúa, 2007). This conception represents a labor of sacrifice, love, possibility, and connectedness. These women are the origin—the womb. Pedagogy of the womb represents engaged scholarship that expresses the necessity of partnership and love among us.

Author

• Cindy Huynh, University of Utah