En förlossningsmaskin utan slut: simulering, realism och postmänsklig feminism

Abstract

Departing from a posthuman feminist understanding of the body (as something always already technological), this article critically explores the design of birth simulators and how simulator design relates to cultural understandings of intimate couplings between female bodies and technologies. The focus is on the construction of simulators, their possibilities, limitations and meanings – and not on actual use in clinical settings. Then again, thinking about design for medical practices is thinking about use in the sense that design processes and practices always inscribe and anticipate use and users in certain ways (and not others). In particular, the article investigates the status of the “real” as well as of “realism” in the simulation world. How are these concepts used within medical simulation? Which are the consequences of this conceptualization for understandings of bodies and technologies? Would a posthuman feminist framework offer other, alternative ways of thinking techno-bodies? The article draws on a range of sources, notably technical manuals, instruction videos, as well as an interview with the simulator’s “founding father”, but it also take into account historical parallels and predecessors, as well as ways of imagining simulator bodies in popular science contexts.