Hospitality of the Matrix

The question "Where do we come from?" has fascinated philosophers, scientists, and artists for generations. This book reorients the question of the matrix as a place where everything comes from (chora, womb, incubator) by recasting it in terms of acts of "matrixial/maternal hospitality" that produce space and matter of / for the other. Systematic acknowledgment of the acts of making space and matter reintroduces the maternal role in generation and contributes to current debates in biomedicine, especially in theoretical biology, embryology, and reproductive immunology of the maternal-fetal interface. Building on and critically evaluating a wide range of historical and contemporary scholarship, Irina Aristarkhova applies her theoretical framework to the science, technology, and art of ectogenesis (artificial wombs and placentas; neonatal incubators; and male pregnancies). Her formulation of matrixial/maternal hospitality provides a framework for rethinking traditional concepts of space and generation and our ability to imagine ethically grounded relations between self and other. Her book relates to contemporary feminist theory and the philosophy of birth and generation and their figurations in biomedical sciences, technologies, and culture.

The question "Where do we come from?" has fascinated philosophers, scientists, and artists for generations. This book reorients the question of the matrix as a place where everything comes from (chora, womb, incubator) by recasting it in terms of acts of "matrixial/maternal hospitality" producing space and matter of and for the other. Irina Aristarkhova theorizes such hospitality with the potential to go beyond tolerance in understanding self/other relations. Building on and critically evaluating a wide range of historical and contemporary scholarship, she applies this theoretical framework to the science, technology, and art of ectogenesis (artificial womb, neonatal incubators, and other types of generation outside of the maternal body) and proves the question "Can the machine nurse?" is critical when approaching and understanding the functional capacities and failures of incubating technologies, such as artificial placenta. Aristarkhova concludes with the science and art of male pregnancy, positioning the condition as a question of the hospitable man and newly defined fatherhood and its challenge to the conception of masculinity as unable to welcome the other.