TY - JOUR
T1 - Empowering Disgust
T2 - Redefining Alternative Postpartum Placenta Practices
AU - Dickenson, Elizabeth
AU - Foss, Karen A.
AU - Kroløkke, Charlotte
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - This article examines communication practices surrounding the unconventional yet emerging trend of postpartum placenta use: eating, encapsulating, or burying the human placenta. Through interviews with both supporters and nonsupporters of postpartum placenta practices, we explore conceptualizations of placenta consumption and burial within larger mothering, childbirth, and postpartum rhetorics. We argue that placenta practices function rhetorically within a core frame of disgust, which both supporters and nonsupporters initially use to respond to placenta use. Yet supporters rearticulate the literal meaning of disgust to create an empowering rhetorical frame from which to view placenta practices and motherhood. In effect, supporters reframe the meaning of disgust toward the mainstream Western medicalization of birth in order to position placenta practices, natural childbirth, and mothering as empowering.
AB - This article examines communication practices surrounding the unconventional yet emerging trend of postpartum placenta use: eating, encapsulating, or burying the human placenta. Through interviews with both supporters and nonsupporters of postpartum placenta practices, we explore conceptualizations of placenta consumption and burial within larger mothering, childbirth, and postpartum rhetorics. We argue that placenta practices function rhetorically within a core frame of disgust, which both supporters and nonsupporters initially use to respond to placenta use. Yet supporters rearticulate the literal meaning of disgust to create an empowering rhetorical frame from which to view placenta practices and motherhood. In effect, supporters reframe the meaning of disgust toward the mainstream Western medicalization of birth in order to position placenta practices, natural childbirth, and mothering as empowering.
U2 - 10.1080/07491409.2016.1247400
DO - 10.1080/07491409.2016.1247400
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0749-1409
VL - 40
SP - 111
EP - 128
JO - Women's Studies in Communication
JF - Women's Studies in Communication
IS - 1
ER -