Postgraduate Researchers

PhD Research Student - School of Art and Design

Project title: Myth Made Possible: Interpreting Speculative Reproductive Futures.

Project abstract:

Speculative Reproductive Futures 

Since the success of the “biobag” prototype designed by researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in 2017, ectogenesis, or artificial wombs, have begun to occupy more space within the popular discourse around the future of human reproduction, inspiring bioethical investigations, industry and institutional investment, think-pieces, artistic interventions, viral concept ads, and Sundance Film Festival romantic comedies. As the birth of the first baby conceived via In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) in 1978 captured imaginations and sparked debate, as well as huge market growth, so too has the work of the CHOP and of other scientists in Japan and the Netherlands set the stage for the next round of reproductive speculation, with far-reaching implications for women, children, and society at large. 

As Donna Haraway reminds us, “technologies and scientific discourses can be partially understood as formalisations of the fluid social interactions constituting them, but they should also be viewed as instruments of enforcing meanings” (Haraway, 1991). Bringing together the work of Haraway and Bernard Stiegler with that of anthropologists of reproduction and reproductive technologies such as Sarah Franklin, this project will engage with the narratives at play in this evolving imaginary of increasingly technoscientifically-mediated reproductive futures, in order to develop a hermeneutic reading of these new representations. By taking artificial wombs as an object of contemporary reproductive speculation, the aim here is to work towards an understanding of how the discourse surrounding these pharmaka brings into being the imagining of certain procreative futures, utopic and dystopic. Thus, the hope is to understand how particular speculations about reproductive futures might work to put forward and enforce particular meanings around procreation (and therefore collective life in general) while other meanings are consigned to be forgotten. 

Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. New York: Routledge, 1991.  

 

Supervisor: Dr Noel Fitzpatrick

Funder: MSCA NEST, Epis Team

ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3052-4807