Unwilled bodily events like childbirth need not count as passive or agency-free.

Evidence

Our tendency to think of childbirth as passive because unwilled and uncontrolled is deep-rooted. Even Simone de Beauvoir, observes Susan Brison, “views childbirth and nursing as completely passive—and thus dehumanizing—processes, which keep women mired in immanence.” Such a view, in its highly transcendental and intentionalist perspective, rejects that birthing has anything to do with agency, with doing. References to pain in birthing tend to underscore its passivity. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 433

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s interest in how Asad redefines agency/embodiment against Western transcendental-intentionalist models, complementing the vault’s interrogations of hidden normativity.
• QUESTION: What would a positive account of childbirth as agency and doing look like for Asad, given his ensoulment framework developed in the following paragraphs?