Gestational Labor and Strategies of Visibility in Fiction and Graphic Memoir
摘要
This chapter argues that pregnancy is at once a state of invisibility and hyper-visibility. This state presents a paradox but also provides representational opportunities which are examined in readings of four texts: Sealed, a climate fiction/horror novel by British author Naomi Booth (Sealed, Dead Ink, 2017); Diary of a Void, a satiric novel by Japanese author Emi Yagi (Diary of a Void, 2022); Pregnant Butch, a graphic memoir by American comics artist Summers (Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag, Soft Skull Press, 2014); and Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos, a graphic memoir by American comics artist Knisley (Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos. First Second, 2019). While these works respond to specific national contexts and individual experiences, common themes of risk and the issue of visibility connect these representations. The texts use genre tropes, visual paradigms, and temporal structures typically associated with pregnancy to foreground the often-erased labor required for bringing new life into the world. Dolmer and Fabricius conclude that all four narratives aim to make the work of pregnancy visible and thus recognizable, thereby staking a political claim and denying any attempt at rendering the labor of gestation merely “natural.”