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Conceiving De-kinning: Practices of Pre-birthing in IVF Clinics in India
Published in Taylor and Francis
2022
Pages: 49 - 63
Abstract
In this chapter, I seek to explore the conflicts inherent in the process of assisted reproduction such as IVF. The paradox of assisted reproduction in India lies in its continued use of women, and men, belonging to particular socio-economic strata to birth for other social strata. This form of stratified reproduction is also re-enacted in the process of extracting and valuing eggs donated by egg provider brought in from poorer parts of India. The visualisation of kinship in the assisted reproductive technology clinic enacts a script of de-kinning in dealing with the gametes and production of a future child. I suggest that de-kinning happens through the visual medium of the ultrasound that attempts to delineate, extract, and depersonalise the bodily substance that is crucial to the making of children and kinship. Here, the clinician's gaze is the most important source of engagement, with the rhetoric that accompanies clinic documents. By analysing the gaze that the clinician employs during these processes, this chapter tries to understand the ways in which infertility medicine seeks to create kin artificially, as it simultaneously seeks to undo many of the processes involved. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Mizuho Matsuo, Sae Nakamura and Kenta Funahashi; individual chapters, the contributors.
About the journal
JournalLife, Illness, and Death in Contemporary South Asia: Living through the Age of Hope and Precariousness
PublisherTaylor and Francis