Breathing through the rage: Maternal refusal as ethnographic method

Abstract

This article theorizes maternal rage as an ethnographic method and affective archive, drawing on interviews with birthing people of color navigating medical neglect, obstetric violence, and postpartum abandonment. Rather than treating rage as an excess or failure of care, I frame it as a form of witnessing and refusal, a bodily record of harm and survival. Situating these accounts within feminist anthropology, critical medical anthropology, and affect theory, I show how maternal rage exposes structural inequalities in reproductive care while resisting the institutional silencing of pain. The article argues for an expanded ethnographic practice attuned to affective residues, unruly testimony, and the nonlinear temporality of grief.