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Sarah Franklin,
"Transbiology: A Feminist Cultural Account of Being After IVF"
(page 8 of 8)
So what are the lessons this review of feminist positions on new
reproductive technologies and the legacy of IVF offer to us today?
Haraway shares a feminist kinship with Firestone in her attempt to
imagine a technologically-assisted reproductive future as both
liberatory and transgressive. She also shares with Firestone a radical
distaste for the normative structures of kinship, parenting, and
family—taking her inspiration from feminist writers such as Joanna Russ,
whose gender-free worlds precisely enact many of Firestone's
prescriptions. Both theorists belong to a socialist-inspired tradition
of progressive humanism laced with biofuturism, and yet one which,
because of its feminism, does not translate easily into contemporary
idioms of transhumanism, posthumanism, autopeoetic emergence, rhizomatic
becoming, the new vitalism, or postmodern cybernetics. Significantly,
both Haraway and Firestone share an abiding concern with women's labor,
and in particular with women working within the sciences. As Firestone
writes in The Dialectic of Sex.
The absence of women at all levels of scientific disciplines
is so commonplace as to lead many (otherwise intelligent) people to
attribute it to some deficiency (logic?) in women themselves. Or to
women's own predilections for the emotional and the subjective over the
practical and the rational. But the question cannot be so easily
dismissed. It is true that women in science are in foreign
territory—but how has this situation evolved? Why are there disciplines or
branches of inquiry that demand only a "male" mind? Why would a woman,
to qualify, have to develop an alien psychology? When and why was the
female excluded from this type of mind? How and why has science come to
be defined as, and restricted to, the
'objective'?[31]
In thinking about the cultural legacy of IVF from a feminist point of
view we should continue to ask critical questions about the unregulated
'baby business' and its risks, as well as its global expansion and
commercialisation as a highly stratified market in reproductive tissue
and services.[32]
Simultaneously, we should remain concerned about
access to these technologies and the value systems that are perpetuated
through them. We should add to this list an appreciation of the extent
to which IVF, while reinforcing some gender, racial, and kinship norms,
has subverted others, and contributed to the collapse of biological
foundationalism.[33]
We should not forget the life sciences are an
increasingly feminised transnational workforce, and we should look for
new and unexpected alliances here. If there is an as yet under-realised
feminist movement within the sciences, this is something to which we
might want to pay attention in our teaching, our reading, and our
politics. Above all we need to be brave and think about our biological
future in a transbiological age. If it can rightly be said that
rethinking the biological is already one of feminisms most important
contributions to contemporary thought, the time is ripe to stretch the
envelope. But listen to me; I am starting to write another manifesto.
Video
Podcast
Listen using the player above or
visit BCRW on iTunes
to download or subscribe to BCRW's podcasts.
Sarah Franklin - Podcast Description
Sarah Franklin delivers the keynote address at the 2009
Scholar and Feminist Conference. Increased demand for assisted
reproductive technology (ART) and transnational adoption has been
propelled by a number of factors, including the development of new
technologies and changes in familial form - such as childrearing in
second or third marriages; lesbian, gay, and transgendered families; and
delays in childbearing and subsequent difficulties in conception - that
make ART helpful. Other relevant factors include environmental changes
that have negatively affected fertility levels, new levels of
transnational migration and interaction that have fueled awareness of
babies available for and in need of adoption, and concerns about genetic
diseases and disabilities. Effectively, the various imperatives and the
desires, both cultural and personal, that the use of ART fosters and
responds to, have created a "baby business" that is largely unregulated
and that raises a number of important social and ethical questions. Do
these new technologies place women and children at risk? How should we
respond ethically to the ability of these technologies to test for
genetic illnesses? And how can we ensure that marginalized individuals,
for example, people with disabilities, women of color, and low-income
women, have equal access to these new technologies and adoption
practices? And, similarly, how do we ensure that transnational surrogacy
and adoption practices are not exploitative? These questions and many
others on the global social, economic and political repercussions of
these new forms of reproduction were the focus of this year's Scholar
and Feminist Conference, "The Politics of Reproduction: New Technologies
of Life," which took place on February 28, 2009 at Barnard
College.
Endnotes
1. This article is a rewritten version of a
keynote lecture given at the Scholar and Feminist conference in 2009. My
thanks to the organizers of this wonderful event, and to both the
editors and reviewers of The Scholar and Feminist Online for
helpful advice, criticism, and feedback. Portions of this article are
forthcoming in "Revisiting Reprotech: Shulamith Firestone and the
Question of Technology" in Shulamith Firestone Revisited, Mandy
Merck, ed. (London: Palgrave, 2010). [Return to text]
2. Compare, for example, the back-to-back feminist
anthologies on NRTS published in the late 1980s: Patricia Spallone and
Deborah Steinberg, eds., Made to Order: the Myth of Reproductive and
Genetic Progress (London: Pergamon, 1987) and Michelle Stanworth,
ed., Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine
(Cambridge: Polity, 1987). [Return to text]
3. Influential publications by members of the
FINRRAGE network include Gena Corea, The Mother Machine: Reproductive
Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs (New
York: Harper & Row, 1985); Renate Klein, Infertility: Women Speak Out
About their Experiences of Reproductive Medicine (London: Pandora,
1989); Janice Raymond, Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies and
the Battle over Women's Freedom (New York: Harper, 1993); Robyn
Rowland, Living Laboratories: Women and Reproductive Technology
(London: Octopus, 1992); Jocelyn Scutt, ed., The Baby Machine:
Reproductive Technology and the Commercialisation of Motherhood
(London: Merlin, 1990). [Return to text]
4. Mary O'Brien. The Politics of Reproduction
(London: Routledge, 1981). [Return to text]
5. For a review of early feminist work on new
reproductive technologies, see Sarah Franklin and Maureen McNeil,
"Reproductive Futures: Recent Literature and Current Debates on
Reproductive Technologies," Feminist Studies 14.3 (1988): 545-61.
For a later analysis and overview see Dion Farquhar, The Other
Machine: Discourse and Reproductive Technologies (New York:
Routledge, 1996). [Return to text]
6. See, for example, the wide diversity of
feminist positions represented in the founding anthology of the feminist
debate over NRTS: Rita Arditti, Renate Duelli Klein, and Shelley Minden,
eds., Test-Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood (London:
Pandora, 1984). Similarly see the discrepancy between the "hard line"
position advocated in the introduction and the somewhat less unequivocal
positions advocated by the individual chapter authors represented in the
1988 FINRRAGE anthology edited by Deborah Steinberg and Pat Spallone in
Made to Order: the Myth of Reproductive and Genetic
Progress. [Return to text]
7. Naomi Pfeffer and Anne Woollett, The
Experience of Infertility (London: Virago, 1983). [Return to text]
8. Christine Crowe, "Women Want It: In Vitro
Fertilisation and Women's Motivations for Participation"WSIF 8
(1985): 547-52; Linda Williams, "Its Gonna Work for Me," PhD
Dissertation, University of Toronto, 1988; Lene Koch, "IVF—An
Irrational Choice?," Reproductive and Genetic Engineering 3
(1990): 225-32; Sarah Franklin, "Deconstructing 'Desperateneness': The
Social Construction of Infertility in Popular Media Representations," in
The New Reproductive Technologies, M. McNeil, I. Varcoe, and S.
Yearley, eds., (London: Macmillan, 1990): 200-229; Sarah Franklin,
"Contested Conceptions: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception," PhD
dissertation, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Study, University of
Birmingham, 1992; Sarah Franklin, "Making Sense of Misconceptions:
Anthropological Approaches to Unexplained Infertility," in Changing
Human Reproduction: Social Science Perspectives, M. Stacey, ed.
(London: Sage, 1990): 75-91. [Return to text]
9. Margarete Sandelowski, "Women's Experience of
Infertility," Journal of Nursing Scholarship 1986; "Fault Lines:
Infertility and Imperilled Sisterhood," Feminist Studies 16.1
(1990): 33-51; "Compelled to Try: the Never-Enough Quality of
Reproductive Technology," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 5.1
(1991): 29-47; With Child In Mind: Studies of the Personal Encounter
with Infertility (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1993). [Return to text]
10. See for example: Gay Becker, The Elusive
Embryo: How Women and Men Approach New Reproductive Technologies
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Sarah Franklin,
Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception
(London: Routledge, 1997); Judith Lorber, "Choice, Gift, or Patriarchal
Bargain? Women's Consent to in vitro Fertilization in Male
Infertility," Hypatia 4.3 (1989): 23-36; Marcia Inhorn, Quest
for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994); Charis Thompson
Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive
Technologies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Karen Throsby When
IVF Fails: Feminism, Infertility and the Negotiation of Normality
(London: Palgrave, 2004). [Return to text]
11. Linda Birke, Sue Himmelweit, and Gail Vines,
Tomorrow's Child: Reproductive Technologies in the 90s (London:
Virago, 1990). [Return to text]
12. See Barbara Katz Rothman, The Tentative
Pregnancy: How Amniocentesis Changes the Experience of Motherhood
(New York: Norton, 1986). [Return to text]
13. Rosalind Petchesky, "Reproductive Freedom:
Beyond 'A Woman's Right to Choose'," Signs 5.4 (1980):
661-685. [Return to text]
14. For useful histories of the IVF technique,
see: John D. Biggers, "In vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer
in Historical Perspective," in In-vitro Fertilization and Embryo
Transfer Alan Trounson and Carl Wood, eds. (London: Churchill
Livingstone, 1999): 3-15); Jack Challoner, The Baby Makers: The
History of Artificial Conception (London: Macmillan, 1999); Adele
Clarke, Disciplining Reproduction: American Life Sciences and 'The
Problems of Sex' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); R. G.
Edwards, "The Bumpy Road to Human In Vitro Fertilization," Nature
Medicine 7.10 (2001): 1091-1094; R.G. Edwards and P. Steptoe, A
Matter of Life: The Story of a Medical Breakthrough (London:
Hutchinson, 1980); S. Fishel and E.M. Symonds, eds., In Vitro
Fertilisation: Past, Present, Future (Oxford: IRL Press, 1986); Ruth
Henig, Pandora's Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the
Reproductive Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004); Naomi
Pfeffer, The Stork and the Syringe: A Political History of
Reproductive Medicine (Cambridge: Polity, 1993). [Return to text]
15. As the authors of one of the largest
meta-reviews of the literature on IVF and birth defects, published in
2005, note: "Since it appears there is an increased risk of birth
defects in infants born following ART treatment and we cannot yet
identify the cause, it is now very important to collect detailed and
accurate information about all treatments that couples have undergone
and their underlying causes of infertility; and to be able to identify
children born following ART procedures so they can be followed."
Michelle Hansen, Carol Bower, Elizabeth Milne, Nicholas de Klerk and
Jennifer J.Kurinczuk, "Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Risk
of Birth Defects—A Systematic Review," Human Reproduction 20.2
(2005): 328-338. [Return to text]
16. Marilyn Strathern, Reproducing the Future:
Anthropology, Kinship and the New Reproductive Technologies
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992); After Nature:
English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992). [Return to text]
17. Eco-futurist Stuart Brand uses the IVF
analogy, for example, to lobby for greater acceptance of genetically
modified foods. In an interview in the Financial Times in January
2010, he argues IVF is a key example of how an initially threatening
technology can come to seem "just as good" as what it is replacing:
"We've had 12 or 13 years of genetically engineered food in this country
and it's been great. My prediction is that in a couple of years we'll
see a soya bean oil that has Omega 3 fatty acids to cut down heart
disease. Who would refuse that, any more than people refuse to take
medicine?" In the long run, he insists, opposition will die out. "IVF is
the big example. I remember when that was an abomination in the face of
God's will. As soon as people met a few of the children, they realized
that they were just as good as the 'regular' ones. My hope is that,
unlike nuclear, which involves almost a theological shift, getting
gradually used to genetic foods will be a non-issue." (Brand quoted in
Honigman 2010). [Return to text]
18. Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on
the 'Political Economy' of Sex," in Towards an Anthropology of
Women, Rayna Reiter, ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1975): 157-210. [Return to text]
19. Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex:
the Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: Bantam, 1970). [Return to text]
20. Maria Mies, "'Why Do We Need All This?': A
Call Against Genetic Engineering and Reproductive Technology,"
Women's Studies International Forum 8.6 (1985):
553-560. [Return to text]
21. Firestone, 181. [Return to text]
22. Firestone. [Return to text]
23. Firestone, 180. [Return to text]
24. Susan Squier, Babies in Bottles: Twentieth
Century Visions of Reproductive Technology (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1994). [Return to text]
25. Squier. [Return to text]
26. Gena Corea, 323. [Return to text]
27. Donna Haraway, "A Manifesto for Cyborgs:
Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth
Century," Socialist Review 80 (1985): 65-108. Interestingly, in
an earlier version of her manifesto, submitted to Socialist
Review in 1984 for their "Orwell Issue," Haraway discusses new
reproductive and genetic technologies at length, arguing that IVF "is
part of the infra-structure of any future genetic engineering, so it is
worth looking at some of the political questions developing here to see
if feminist practices might establish a foothold." See
Haraway (PDF) 1984, 6. [Return to text]
28. Sherry Ortner, "Is Female to Male as Nature
is to Culture," Feminist Studies 1.2 (1972): 5-31. [Return to text]
29. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism
and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). [Return to text]
30. "Biology itself" is a revealing phrase. When
Foucault refers to "life itself" he invokes a technology of
representation—a means by which life could be given a newfound unity
through a genealogical model of nature. Epistemologically this new unity
of life gave birth to biology, the first discipline of the modern life
sciences, which, as Foucault reminded readers of The Order of
Things in 1966, did not exist until the late 19th century. [Return to text]
31. Firestone. [Return to text]
32. Debora Spar, The Baby Business: How Money,
Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception (Cambridge:
Harvard Business School Press, 2006). [Return to text]
33. For a discussion of feminist perspectives on
the biological see: Sarah Franklin, "Biologization Revisited: Kinship
Theory in the Context of the New Biologies," in Relative Values:
Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon,
eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002): 302-22. See also: Sarah
Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey, Global Nature, Global
Culture (London: Sage, 2002). [Return to text]
References
Arditti, Rita, Renate Duelli Klein and Shelley Minden, eds. (1984)
Test-Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood? (London:
Pandora).
Becker, Gay (2000) The Elusive Embryo: How Women and Men Approach
New Reproductive Technologies (Berkeley: University of California
Press).
Biggers JD (1984) "In vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer in
Historical Perspective" in: In-vitro Fertilization and Embryo
Transfer. Eds. Trounson A, Wood C, London: Churchill Livingstone,
pp. 3-15.
Birke L., Himmelweit S., Vines G. (1990) Tomorrow's Child:
Reproductive Technologies in the 90s (London: Virago).
Butler, Judith (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity (New York: Routledge).
Challoner, Jack (1999) The Baby Makers: The History of Artificial
Conception (London: Macmillan).
Clarke, Adele E. (1998) Disciplining Reproduction: American Life
Sciences and "The Problems of Sex" (Berkeley: University of
California Press).
Corea, Gena (1985) The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies
from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs (New York: Harper &
Row).
Crowe, Christine (1985) "Women Want It: In Vitro Fertilisation and
Women's Motivations for Participation," Women's Studies International
Forum 8: 547-52.
Cussins, Charis (1996) "Ontological Choreography: Agency Through
Objectification in Infertility Clinics" Social Studies of Science
26:3: 575-610.
Edwards, R. G. (2001) "The Bumpy Road to Human In Vitro
Fertilization" Nature Medicine 7:10: 1091-1094.
Edwards R. G., Steptoe P. (1980) A Matter of Life: The Story of a
Medical Breakthrough (London: Hutchinson).
Farquhar, Dion (1996) The Other Machine: Discourse and
Reproductive Technologies (New York: Routledge).
Firestone, Shulamith (1970) The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for
Feminist Revolution (New York: Bantam).
Fishel S., Symonds E. M. (1986) Eds. In Vitro Fertilisation: Past,
Present, Future (Oxford: IRL Press).
Franklin, Sarah (1990) "Deconstructing 'Desperateneness': The Social
Construction of Infertility in Popular Media Representations" in M.
McNeil, I. Varcoe and S. Yearley, eds., The New Reproductive
Technologies, (London: Macmillan, pp. 200-229).
Franklin, Sarah (1992) Contested Conceptions: A Cultural Account
of Assisted Conception (PhD diss, CCCS Birmingham).
Franklin, Sarah (1992) "Making Sense of Misconceptions:
Anthropological Approaches to Unexplained Infertility" in M. Stacey,
ed., Changing Human Reproduction: Social Science Perspectives
(London: Sage, pp. 75-91).
Franklin, Sarah (1997) Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of
Assisted Conception (London: Routledge).
Franklin, Sarah and Maureen McNeil (1988) "Reproductive Futures:
Recent Literature and Current Debates on Reproductive Technologies"
Feminist Studies 14:3: 545-61.
Franklin, Sarah (2001) "Biologization Revisited: Kinship Theory in
the Context of the New Biologies" in S. Franklin and S. McKinnon, eds.
Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies (Durham: Duke
University Press, pp. 302-22).
Franklin, Sarah, Celia Lury and Jackie Stacey (2000) Global
Nature, Global Culture (London: Sage).
Hansen, Michelle, Carol Bower, Elizabeth Milne, Nicholas de Klerk and
Jennifer J.Kurinczuk (2005) "Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the
Risk of Birth Defects—A Systematic Review" Human Reproduction
20(2): 328-338.
Haraway, Donna (1985) "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology,
and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" Socialist
Review 80: 65-108.
Henig, Robin M. (2004) Pandora's Baby: How the First Test Tube
Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution (Boston, Houghton
Mifflin).
Inhorn, Marcia (1994) Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility,
and Egyptian Medical Traditions (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press).
Klein R. (1989) Infertility: Women Speak Out About their
Experiences of Reproductive Medicine (London: Pandora).
Koch, Lene (1990) "IVF—An Irrational Choice?" Reproductive and
Genetic Engineering 3: 225-32.
Mies, Maria (1985) "'Why Do We Need All This?': A Call Against
Genetic Engineering and Reproductive Technology" Women's Studies
International Forum 8:6: 553-560.
O'Brien, Mary (1981) The Politics of Reproduction (London:
Routledge Kegan & Paul).
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Pfeffer N. (1993) The Stork and the Syringe: A Political History of
Reproductive Medicine (Cambridge: Polity).
Raymond, Janice (1993) Women as Wombs: Reproductive Technologies
and the Battle over Women's Freedom (New York: Harper San Francisco).
Rothman, Barbara Katz (1986) The Tentative Pregnancy: How
Amniocentesis Changes the Experience of Motherhood (New York:
Norton).
Rowland, Robyn (1992) Living Laboratories: Women and Reproductive
Technology (London: Octopus).
Rubin, Gayle (1975) "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political
Economy' of Sex" in Rayna Reiter, ed., Towards an Anthropology of
Women (New York: Monthly Review Press, pp.157-210).
Sandelowski, Margarete (1986) "Women's Experience of Infertility"
Journal of Nursing Scholarship.
Sandelowski, Margarete (1990) "Fault Lines: Infertility and
Imperilled Sisterhood" Feminist Studies 16:1: 33-51.
Sandelowski, Margarete (1991) "Compelled to Try: The Never-Enough
Quality of Reproductive Technology" Medical Anthropology
Quarterly 5:1: 29-47.
Sandelowski, Margarete (1993) With Child In Mind: Studies of the
Personal Encounter With Infertility (Philadephia: U Penn Press).
Scutt, Jocelyn, ed. (1990) The Baby Machine: Reproductive
Technology and the Commercialisation of Motherhood (London: Merlin).
Spallone, Patricia and Steinberg, Deborah Lynn (1987) Eds. Made to
Order: The Myth of Reproductive and Genetic Progress (London:
Pergamon).
Spar, Debora (2006) The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and
Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception (Cambridge: Harvard
Business School Press).
Squier, Susan M. (1994) Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century
Visions of Reproductive Technology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press).
Stanworth, Michelle (1987) Ed. Reproductive Technologies: Gender,
Motherhood and Medicine (Cambridge: Polity).
Strathern, Marilyn (1992) Reproducing the Future: Anthropology,
Kinship and the New Reproductive Technologies (Manchester:
Manchester University Press).
Thompson, Charis (2005) Making Parents: The Ontological
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the Negotiation of Normality (London: Palgrave).
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