Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

The politics of life itself Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century

Professor Titmuss, an eminent English social theorist, believes that man is inherently altruistic and that the duty of government is to create that social and economic climate which best channels man's drive to work together for the common good. In support of this belief, he has written a book about the procurement, distribution, and transfusion of human blood, a medical topic which he employs as an illustrative social and economic microcosm. The conclusion he reaches is foregone: "The voluntary socialized system in Britain is economically, professionally, administratively and qualitatively more efficient than the mixed, commercialized, and individualistic American system" (Titmuss, R.M: "Why Give to Strangers?" Lancet 1 :123-125, 1971). As the book was written with a bias, so will it be read with bias. My own bias is that of an American and a blood-banker. I am only too conscious of many deficiencies in the American complex of arrangements—it isn't

The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy

The tourist: a new theory of the leisure class

The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction by Emily Martin Beacon Press, 1987 Paperback, 276 pp $1195 Winner of the 1988 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize As anthropology at its best can do, this book exposes hidden cultural assumptions about the nature of reality Martin has produced a powerful study of the dialectic between medical metaphors for women's reproductive processes and women's own views of those processes She and her associates interviewed 165 white and black women, seeking a balance between the three life stages of puberty, childbearing, and menopause 43% of her interviewees were working-class; 57% middleclass Early on Martin came up against one of the greatest dangers of studying one's own society Hearing women discuss uterine contractions as separate from the self and labor as something one "went through," and reading the same in medical texts, she at first thought that her interviews had turned up views of the body that simply reflected actual scientific fact It took her some time to realize that such scientific views are not "fact" but culturally grounded statements of an underlying ideology To get at this ideology Martin studied medical texts for the "grammar" that scientific medicine uses to describe female bodies In this medical grammar, she finds industrial society writ small The female reproductive tract is a machine designed to produce a baby; accordingly, menstruation represents failed production, connoting both a productive system that has failed to produce and one that produces only useless waste Such metaphors, disturbing to a society whose existence depends upon continued production, lead to menstruation's description in medical texts in highly negative terms: The fall in blood progesterone and estrogen, which results from regression of the corpus luteum, deprives the highly developed endometrial lining of its hormonal support    Disintegration starts    The endometrial arteries dilate, resulting in hemorrhage through the weakened capillary walls; the menstrual flow consists of this blood mixed with endometrial debris    (quoted on p 48) (Martin contrasts this with a description of male reproductive physiology which speaks of the "remarkable" cellular transformation from spermatid to mature sperm, its "amazing" nature and "sheer magnitude") Confronting the argument that the above is not value-laden but simply a factual description of menstruation, Martin examines medical descriptions of the analogous regular shedding and replacement of the lining of the stomach, finding in a number of texts no references to degeneration, but instead a stress on the periodic "renewal" of the stomach lining Concluding that writers can choose to depict what happens to the lining of stomachs and uteruses either negatively as breakdown and decay or positively as continual production and replenishment, Martin suggests an alternative medical description of menstruation: A drop in the formerly high levels of progesterone and estrogen creates the appropriate environment for reducing the excess layers of endometrial tissue Constriction of capillary blood vessels causes a lower level of oxygen and nutrients and paves the way for a vigorous production of menstrual fluids    Such a description would far more accurately reflect women's own more positive assessments of the menstrual fluid as the desired product Viewing pregnancy as the sole purpose of female reproductive organs and despising menstruation as a "waste" ignores the reality that most women do not intend to get pregnant most of the time (and so are often joyful when menstruation begins), and conceals "the true unity women have    [Menstruation is] the one thing we all share" (p 112) In spite of ambivalence about the "disgusting mess," most interviewees felt that menstruation defines them as women and insisted that they wouldn't want to give it up Teens spoke of the joy of getting their periods so they could be part of the in-group that shared the women's "special secret," of mothers and sisters greeting their first menstruation with "You're a woman now! …

The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction

Introduction Acknowledgments 1. Three Waves of Feminism: From Suffragettes to Grrls The First Feminist Wave: Votes for Women The Second Feminist Wave: "The Personal Is Political" The Third Feminist Wave: Transversal Politics Our Own Situatedness: Transversity 2. Feminist Communication Theories Structuralism and Feminist Communication Theories Poststructuralism and Feminist Communication Theories Conclusion 3. Feminist Communication Methodology Structuralism and Methodology Poststructuralism and Methodology Conclusion 4. Sexist Discourse, Deficit and Dominance From Deficit to Dominance Situated Dominances Case Study: Feminist Conversation Analysis (FCA) 5. Discourses of Difference and Identity Gender, Discourse, and Articulation Settings of Difference Case Study: Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) 6. Gender and Performance Gender, Performance, and Communication Situated Performances Case Study: Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA) Conclusion From Silence to Performance From Conversation Analysis to Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis Toward Transitivity: What Does the Future Hold? References Index About the Authors

Gender Communication Theories and Analyses: From Silence to Performance

The authors analyse how reproduction in the Scandinavian countries has gone global and intersects with neo-liberal reproductive practices. Of particular interest is how neo-liberal discourses are constructed in Scandinavian and Indian biopolitical and bioethical debates on surrogacy as well as how they are produced and negotiated by different reproductive actors in cases of transnational surrogacy in India. The multi-sited and cross-cultural empirical approach employed in this article brings the concept of neo-liberalism into dialogue with reproductive assistants or workers such as intended parents, surrogates, and clinical directors. To engage the global assemblage of neo-liberalism and reproductive technologies, the authors develop the concept of “repropreneurs”, illustrating how the individuals involved employ rational and reflexive, individualist and collective, as well as affective and resistant responses to the experiences of surrogacy.

“I only need her uterus”: Neo-liberal Discourses on Transnational Surrogacy

The promise of egg freezing for women's fertility preservation entered feminist debate in connection with medical and commercial control over, and emancipation from, biological reproduction restrictions. In this paper we explore how women negotiate and make sense of the decision to freeze their eggs. Our analysis draws on semi-structured interviews with 16 women from the Midwest and East Coast regions of the USA who froze their eggs. Rather than freezing to balance career choices and 'have it all', the women in this cohort were largely 'freezing for love' and in the hope of having their 'own healthy baby'. This finding extends existing feminist scholarship and challenges bioethical concerns about egg freezing by drawing on the voices of women who freeze their eggs. By viewing egg freezing as neither exclusively liberation nor oppression or financial exploitation, this study casts egg freezing as an enactment of 'responsible' reproductive citizenship that 'anticipates coupledom' and reinforces the genetic relatedness of offspring.

Freezing for Love: Enacting 'responsible' reproductive citizenship through egg freezing

In postmodern culture, sperm banking is turned into a legitimate business. This article expands on consumer theory and feminist scholarship and analyses the ways in which masculinity is positioned and performed on the website of one of the world's largest sperm banks, Cryos International. Cryos International brands its product as uniquely Scandinavian while simultaneously engaging in the discourses of a multicultural society. Viking donors are not only white, athletic, fit and young, but also sensitive, witty and moral; intimately connecting images of the donors to images of a nurturing and progressive Scandinavia. The website encourages prospective parents to not only consume sperm, but to also vividly consume images of cute, active, intelligent Nordic children and successful (heterosexual) families.

Click a Donor: Viking masculinity on the line

This article employs the concept of affective assemblage to discuss how fertility travelers make sense of their decision to travel to Spain for oocyte donation. Motherhood is brought into being thr...

Charlotte Kroløkke

Papers

Gender Communication Theories and Analyses: From Silence to Performance

“I only need her uterus”: Neo-liberal Discourses on Transnational Surrogacy

Freezing for Love: Enacting 'responsible' reproductive citizenship through egg freezing

Click a Donor: Viking masculinity on the line

West is Best: Affective Assemblages and Spanish Oôcytes