I Give Birth / I Lay Bare / I Dissolve: Experiments in Narrating Self-Loss in Recent Dutch-Language Birth Literature
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In a small wave of recent Dutch-language birth literature, giving birth is described as a process in which the birth-giver loses their self. Clearly, such a process of self-loss cannot simply be described in a chronological first-person narrative written in the past tense. The autobiographical novel Oersoep (‘Primordial Soup’) (2023) by Bregje Hofstede, the autobiographical poem ‘Een fjord van pijn’ (‘A Fjord of Pain’) (2023) by Laurine Verweijen and the autobiographical novel De stem van Sulina (‘Sulina’s Voice’) (2024) by Anneleen van Offel.] are therefore fragmentary in setup and characterised by constant register shifts and typographical extravagances. While the three texts share the theme of self-loss and waterway-related imagery, the birth experiences described by the three authors also differ – as do the precise experimental ways in which they are described. This article exposes – which, tellingly, is the original meaning of the Dutch word for giving birth (‘baren’): to lay bare or expose – which literary experiments give expression to three different experiences of giving birth. In this exposition, the French thinker and writer Maurice Blanchot, expert in the field of self-loss and its literary expression, serves as a sort of midwife.
Source: Life Writing
Authors: Kim Schoof, Rodante van der Waal
Institutions: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4416144754