Matrescence and the Battle of Birth in Aztec Cosmology: Towards a Matricentric Heroism of Birth

This paper draw on the poetic and visceral power of an Aztec childbirth oration, displaced in a drama of the birth of Christianity, in order to counter masculinised, neutered, pacified, abstracted, co-opted and superseded dramas of 'birth'. The orator is an authoritative female voice, shifting between an older kinswoman, speaking on behalf of all generations forever, a midwife (an ‘artisan and crafstwomen of birth’), and the goddesses Cihuacoatl and Yohualticitl. Centre stage is the metamorphosis and ‘matrescence’ (Jones 2023) of the nascent mother, and a battle of birth on which the very world depends, as surely as it depends on the ongoing life of the sun. I use the energy of the oration to expose the queer displacements of birth in the Judeo-Christian tradition and 'secular' institutions of motherhood, and ask what our cultural imaginaries might look like if natality were not discarded as incidental--or feminist.