Academic literature on the topic 'Reproductive technology – Fiction'

This article explores the ways in which reproductive technology is used as a literary trope to enable or embody adesired social order in a utopian setting. It discusses Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and “Coming of Age in Karhide” (1995), Joanna Russ’ The Female Man (1975), and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976). In these American classics of feminist science fiction, reproduction is a key element, and they are rooted in a feminist understanding of power that sees the organization of both reproductive and child-care labor as central to analyses of patriarchy, as well as to any attempts to re-imagine patriarchal structures. The analysis draws on critical kinship studies that see the forming of kinship and families as a form of “cultural technology” and which thus opens these relationships to critical examination. It explores how the kind of change reproductive technologies can effect is not a property simply inherent in the technologiesthemselves. Rather, these medical technologies intersect with and become part of pre-existing cultural technologies of family and gender. Finally, the article addresses the question of how feminist futurities or feminist conceptions of time can be mobilized to enable resistance and change.

Artificial womb or ectogenesis may sound like science fiction at present. Nevertheless, research on this technology is moving rapidly and it is anticipated to be ready for human testing in years to come. Although not yet a reality, early discussion on the legal and ethical ramifications of this technology should be encouraged as to ensure that the law is moving side by side with the scientific developments. Therefore, this article undertakes the challenge of identifying and presenting the potential implications of ectogenesis to women, embryos, and society, with special reference to the legal and social backgrounds in Malaysia. The analysis began by applying the theory of individual reproductive autonomy that is commonly relied upon in arguments for the use of assisted reproductive technologies. It is argued that reliance on the notion of individual reproductive autonomy permits the use of ectogenesis provided that no harm is caused to others. Following that, the possible harms or concerns surrounding ectogenesis were carefully presented. This article concluded that more detailed deliberations on the use of ectogenesis are required before an affirmative legal stance can be reached on its permissibility. This article is significant as it paves the way for more research in this area particularly from the Malaysian perspective.

The digital turn in anthropology and ethnography is not a sudden rupture to the field’s epistemological quest. In recent years, after the visual turn and the evolution of Digital Humanities, there have been notable efforts to address the digital aspect of social reality by several anthropologists worldwide. However, the focus has been predominantly on the observation of internet cultures and communities, mainly tackling phenomena that ‘take place’ in the digital realm, and on the techniques and issues that arise from conducting online research with limited contributions to the theoretical ramifications of recent advancements on the technological front. We argue that the methodological repercussions of the discussion around digital ethnographic writing modalities has not yet been adequately addressed, which reflects a wider tendency of the anthropological lens to remain on the “observant” side of things and not partake in the active discussion and practices regarding knowledge production and representation. Drawing on the research project “Ethnography and/as hypertext fiction: representing surrogate motherhood” (HYFRESMO), currently implemented at the Anthropology Department of Panteion University and funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation & the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, the paper seeks to provide an example of the creative accommodation of digital media in the field of anthropology. In order to do so, it focuses on the intersections between the object of study (new reproductive technologies) and the writing tropes made available by new digital technologies. After conducting ‘traditional’ physical fieldwork on surrogate motherhood, and combining offline and online observation and communication with research interlocutors, our methodological proposition does not aspire to radicalize the work already implemented by fellow anthropologists in the direction of data gathering or performing participant observation in the digital/cyber-sphere; rather, in our endeavor to create a transmedia, non-text-oriented, fictional ethnographic account (during but mainly after) the fieldwork experience, we propose that digital ethnographic representation becomes a very privileged under-researched terrain upon which to experiment on the transformative potential of the digital turn in the humanities and creatively tie together the research topics and their representational potentials.

Abstract Science fiction and time travel can be used to inform and enhance the education of law students in profound ways. Within the broader field of law and literature, the relationship between law and science fiction, especially time travel stories, is rich and useful. Themes and concepts in time travel can be applied in the exploration of existing legal philosophies as well as a more expansive and engaging study of power, authority, freedom, and a number of global issues. As governments and people worldwide wrestle with climate change, armed conflict, pandemics, and the increasing significance of artificial intelligence and other advances in technology, time travel stories give students unique contexts in which to consider what law is and the degree to which it defines human experience. For generations, brilliant science fiction writers have offered thought-provoking stories and worlds that law professors and their students can use to reimagine legal thought and practice. Like its close relatives, mythology and fantasy, the science fiction genre is untethered to current social or political experience or projections necessarily corrupted by narrowly conceived historical perspectives. Science fiction writers are interested in illuminating possibilities by considering identifiable problems in unidentifiable environments. It is no accident that gender identity, racism, reproductive rights, extremist ideologies, global health crises, and various recognizable forms of labor exploitation are addressed in provocative and insightful ways by a number of the best science fiction writers. Law has a strong presence in their work. Judges, law givers, ruling groups, and other less familiar forms of power and control appear in these stories and help to move and shape the experience of the time traveler. Law students can draw on the work of these writers to consider old questions in new and refreshingly broad ways. The importance of communication and access to information are also strong themes common to law and science fiction. How are concepts of truth and propaganda significant to power? Is truth necessary for legitimacy? Information technologies introduced in the science fiction world now exist in real time in forms and with speed and volume unimagined even a few decades ago. As artificial intelligence becomes dominant in many aspects of our daily lives, law students must consider how it may change law making, court procedures, entire legal systems, and perhaps even concepts of justice. As a project, law students might develop a case and conduct a trial using an AI judge or try a case to an AI jury. How human is the law? The role of emotional intelligence and concepts like mercy, restorative justice, forgiveness, or retribution are also things they might explore in seminars or other classes using science fiction literature and other time travel media as a framework.

Abstract Since 1987, the year of birth of the first child conceived outside the womb, experiments with human life have been leading to an intense public debate about the benefits, chances and risks of research in reproductive medicine. For what had formerly existed in fictional worlds only, be it the alchemical mind game, the homunculus- recipe of Paracelsus or the breeding centre of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, was now happening in reality. With in vitro fertilization becoming a feasible alternative to creating offspring, the literary forms of representation for those technologies changed, too. This will be analysed in three exemplary 1980s novels with regard to topical focus, modifications in genre poetics and specific rhetoricity. It becomes apparent that in the age of human reproductive technology, the old motif of life from the lab has long lost its fictitious status and now manifests itself in diverse, sometimes bizarre ways as a part of social reality. As a result, authors now focus on the specific ethical and social problems of reproductive medicine. However, for fictional elaboration and rhetorical ornamentation of dystopias, bio-genetics and nanotechnology are mostly consulted because these sciences offer means of seemingly creating perfected and custom-made descendants.

Abstract: This article studies the 1919 novel Eugenia by the prolific Yucatec writer and medical doctor Eduardo Urzaiz, focusing on gestational surrogacy and its implications as it is represented in this short novel. I argue that Urzaiz's fantasy of mainstreamed assisted reproduction technology and gestational surrogacy echoes current, more dissimulated discussions of what it means for affluent members of society with disposable income to place an order for a designer baby. While eugenics received a bad name after the excesses of the Nazi regime, its underlying principles certainly remain salient, as do the questions raised by contemporary watchdog institutes about what happens when science is not monitored by ethics. Novels like this speculative fiction presciently ask us to interrogate more fundamentally, what ethics are, and from whose limited cultural perspective we make universalist claims.

This experimental writing both embodies and interrogates how creative work that is re-mixed and re-presented also creates multivalent “experiences.” A menagerie of quotations performs both a narrative-of-thinking and open-ended discursive potential. The work asks: Can this manuscript both analyze and perform a subversion, problematizing notions of authenticity, authorship, ownership, production, distribution, reception, and meaning? Can immersion in fragmented, derivative writing produce an affective experience in line with a contemporary post-pandemic and technologically- and social-media-immersive “structure of feeling”? The excerpts include discussions of Vincent Van Gogh’s work recently presented as popular “immersive experiences”; discourse on the commodification, reproduction, and authenticity of art; views on artistic presentation in a pandemic- and technology-infused era; and quotations concerning (and drawn from work in) deconstruction, authorship, and avant-garde fiction, further extending interpretative potential. Where does it start, where does it take you, and where do you feel it?

In Pedagogies of Crossing (2005), M. Jacqui Alexander asserts that human rights are not rights at all; in fact, human rights does little to mitigate the violence perpetuated by late capitalism and the legacies of imperialism and colonialism. Alexander’s point of contention brings to bear the fact that the passing of human rights by the United Nations, among other groups, institutes a “dominant knowledge framework” that does nothing to mitigate the violence perpetuated by unequal power structures (2005; 124). My paper focuses on the function of literary counter-narratives as a useful pedagogical strategy for teaching about human rights in the undergraduate classroom. I frame my analysis within the theoretical debates in critical pedagogy and turn to what Stephen Slemon defines as the “primal scene of colonialist management”—the literary studies classroom—in order to examine the ways in which contemporary black women’s writing problematizes the rhetoric of ‘women’s rights as human rights.’ Despite the common belief that white middle-class readers are consuming ‘exotic’ literature when reading immigrant fiction, as noted by scholars Kanishka Chowdhury (1992) and Inderpal Grewal (2005), I maintain that counter-narratives are useful for intervening in the reproduction of a “patriotic education” (Sheth 2013) that undergirds rights-based discourse, in general, and human rights, in particular, as desirable global policies that mitigate the violence of social injustices. Through primary texts Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1984), Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy (1990), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013), I argue that these texts perform a counter-“cultural technology” in teaching about human rights in literary studies through the lens of “race radicalism” (Melamed 2011), that is cultural production that interrupts the totalizing effects of neocolonial and imperial discourses so often produced in dominant Western literature. Cliff, Kincaid, and Adichie strategically produce oppositional “outsider” narratives that trouble the hegemonic narrative of ‘women’s rights as human rights,’ which implicitly positions women of color in a subordinate position (Mohanty 1986; Spivak 1986). As black feminist Patricia Hill Collins notes, the “‘outsider within’ status has provided a special standpoint on self, family, and society for Afro-American women.” This standpoint is especially productive for “producing distinctive analyses of race, class, and gender.” I extend Hill Collins’ concept to also include the category of ‘nation.’ Simply put, I argue that the counter-narratives produced by these writers make privy the position of the cultural outsider to American students who have “taken-for-granted assumptions” of human rights discourses as cultural insiders in the U.S. With insight drawn from critical pedagogy, I construct a counter-curriculum that intervenes in a reproduction of global human rights policies constructed through neoliberal ideologies.

Within the latitude of a science-fictional elsewhere and elsewhen, women can establish their own social norms and accepted praxis. The modification encountered in alternate feminist spacetimes specifically incorporate many new ideologies concerning motherhood. Central to this discussion is the means by which feminist authors regard the influences of patriarchal institutions and the subsequent changes in society because of, or in spite of, these changes. The male-dominated fields of technological patriarchy (reproduction and fertility "specialists") and the military, for example, are areas upon which feminist authors speculate. Three feminist strategies for coping with a patriarchal social order, as seen in the works of science-fiction, are entrance into the male world and attempts to change it, competition in the patriarchal world on its own terms and total retreat from an oppressive society, accompanied by the creation of a feminist utopian otherworld. These feminist spacetimes share a number of convictions. Most important, conception is never an unwilled experience. The "maternal instinct", is redefined as a calling which, in some cases, extends to males and non-biological mothers. Traits that are salient in the childraisers are those which are mirrored by these alternate feminist spacetimes as a whole and which contribute to the definition of these societies as utopias. The treatment and/or possession of children as property is frowned upon in the novels. Some points of dissent amongst feminist SF authors include the existence of technology in an utopian or dystopian future for motherhood, and whether or not males are permitted and/or encouraged to participate in society as a whole and more precisely in the experience of mothering. The dystopia, for its part, can thus be regarded as a warning against the encroachment of rampant patriarchal enterprises through their representation of the extrapolation of male-centred value systems. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This chapter talks about revolutionary suicide is not an advocacy for death, but as the idea of a furious collective survival at all costs. Huey P. Newton's phrase describes revolutionary suicide as a form of political commitment that includes a willingness to endanger oneself. As forms of dismantling, the theories and practices of revolutionary suicide demonstrate how bodies may strike not only against their machines, but also against themselves, if the alternative is to be made into a machine. Revolutionary suicide is the cybercultural self-elimination of one body in response to instrumentalization by another. In a mode of revolutionary suicide, dismantling is a generative protest: not against technology but instead against the instrumentalization of human life through techniques of compulsory motherhood, black slavery, militarized science, and the binding constraints of humanist fiction. In characters' capacity to dismantle themselves, within and against the conventions of genre and story, revolutionary suicide is how texts rupture the stultifying categories of race and reproductive technology in defense of subjugable bodies.

Chapter 3 explores the themes of community and identity, considering the discourses organized around different groups on the island. The first section in this chapter discusses the spatial and temporal dislocations that introduce new communities of characters which, at the same time, fill in missing pieces of the narrative jigsaw. In particular, this section analyses how the Other is a foregrounded concept on Lost. The discussion takes in the way Lost encodes difference, and thus destabilizes or unsettles the social and cultural order. The character Juliet is used as a case study in a discussion of gender and class differences, and this leads into a discussion in the second section concerning arguments about gender and reproductive technology. A significant theme in feminist accounts of the science fiction genre, this positions Juliet as an important boundary-crossing figure in the narrative. The discussion of Juliet is contrasted with an analysis of the representations of the fertile mother figure Claire, and Rousseau, the bereaved mother who has lost her child.

Abstract H. R. Giger’s contributions to Alien were so extensive that many speak of the film as a cinematic realization of the artist’s oeuvre. His designs have transformed the aesthetics of the science fiction and horror genres, as illustrated by Star Trek, Predator, and The Matrix. In his work on Alien, Giger employed the same style, themes, and motifs as his biomechanical art. A nightmarish double of Donna Haraway’s cyborg, and a casebook study of Noël Carroll’s category jamming, Giger’s Alien breaks down the binary divisions between body and machine, human and non-human, male and female, death and birth, beauty and terror. His exploration of the impact of technology on organic bodies leads many viewers to think of Giger’s biomechanics as futuristic, but retrofuturistic would be the more appropriate term, as illustrated by his designs for the derelict spacecraft and extraterrestrial pilot in Alien, as well as his earlier designs for Jodorowsky’s unrealized Dune. In the sequels and prequels of the Alien franchise, however, the artist’s creations are stripped of their key stylistic traits and molded to fit more traditional ways of thinking about technology, life-forms, sexual reproduction, and more.

Los megadesarrollos turísticos de sol y playa han sido impulsados por el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) como proyectos de estrategia de desarrollo turístico, en México nacen los Centros Integralmente Planeados (CIP´s) para dar orden urbano, descentralizando grandes inversiones turísticas principalmente de origen extranjeros. Son identificados ante la promoción turística por la inversión de insumos y tecnología. Los emplazamientos turísticos de sol y playa han crecido y destinan espacios para el hospedaje turístico temporal y permanente. Este tipo de emplazamientos destacan por ser representaciones de exclusividad, privacidad y seguridad, manifestando enclavamiento en la serie de conjuntos turísticos construidos para integrar el megadesarrollo turístico, demarcando un acceso que indica el inicio del montaje realidad-ficción, conformando el montaje de ficción, que llevan a construir una realidad a partir del imaginario. Lo sucedido fuera del montaje será considerado como realidad, al establecerse una serie de compaginaciones que fabricarán la nueva realidad, la realidad-ficción, entre representaciones de fantasía visuales, de sonidos y sobretodo de ideas por transmitir, como es lo motivante que resultan para los turistas las guías turísticas. Las representaciones son basadas en imágenes de paisajes, personas, ciudades, entre otros emblemas simbólicos. Cada espacio por destacar será retomado para enfocar el montaje en dibujos, pinturas, danzas, arquitectura, entre otras dinámicas de conquista turística, igual sucede con la reproducción de sonidos relacionados con la exclusividad, privacidad y seguridad para el turista al interior del conjunto. Toda construcción de la realidad se realiza en un espacio y un tiempo definido a partir del imaginario, ya que existe el objetivo de cautivar al visitante, dentro de una serie de montajes continuos donde será eliminada la línea de corte entre montajes, convirtiendo la ficción en realidad para el turista, el montaje correcto y el escenario indicado, señalan el orden constante de los montajes. Del trozo de imágenes fabricadas y rescatadas del ambiente natural o real, se conformara una relación argumental a través de la compaginación con la secuencia adecuada de cada una de las escenas plasmadas por el imaginario, unir y encauzar los montajes para el cumplimiento de la representación en un filme. De los ejemplos más destacados son las creaciones a partir del imaginario en los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, representados en los hoteles como torre hilton baynunah, jumeirah Beach burj al-arab, hotel w, hotel apearon island y hotel eta, los cuales exponen servicios como compras de lujo, centros spa con instalaciones exclusivas para el deporte y el tiempo libre, habitaciones equipadas, climatizadas y con lo último de la tecnología. Se distinguen los colores y las formas por resaltar ante la cultura árabe, pero es importante señalar que cada uno de esos megadesarrollos turísticos marcará su filme con esta serie de montajes, que permitirán compaginar la serie de trozos de imágenes fabricadas ante la fantasía imaginada. Los megadesarrollos turísticos se distinguen por crear escenarios turísticos a partir del imaginario, destacando el enclavamiento a través de la búsqueda del concepto de seguridad, con un marcado interés para conformar comunidades nuevas, asimismo elementos como los acceso se encuentran custodiados por personal de seguridad que indicara la bienvenida al turista, sin conocer que será guiado y vigilado por cámaras de video ocultas en la masa de la edificación, también se distinguen elementos de seguridad para la movilidad y accesibilidad al conjunto, destacando vía aérea, naval ó terrestre, el recorrido al interior marcándose bajo un escalonamiento de cota descendente a nivel de playa, mostrara cada uno de los escenarios turísticos montados para indicar el recorrido al turista al interior del conjunto turístico. The sun and beach tourist megadevelopments have been stimulated by the Inter-American Bank of Development (BID) as projects of strategy of tourist development, in Mexico there are born the Integrally planned Centers (CIP's) to give urban order, decentralizing big tourist investments principally of origin foreigners. They are identified before the tourist promotion by the investment of inputs and technology. The emplacements have grown and destine spaces for the tourist temporary and permanent. This type stand out for being representations of exclusivity, privacy and safety, demonstrating interlock in the series of tourist sets constructed to integrate the tourist megadevelopment, limiting an access that indicates the beginning of the montage reality - fiction, shaping the montage of fiction, that they lead to constructing a reality from the imaginary one. The happened out of the montage will be considered to be a reality, on there having be established a series of page lay-outs that will make the new reality, the reality - fiction, between visual representations of fantasy, of sounds and overcoat of ideas for transmitting, since motivation is that the tourist guides prove for the tourists. The representations are based on images of landscapes, persons, cities and symbolic emblems. Chaque espace pour se faire remarquer sera repris pour mettre au point le montage dans des dessins, des peintures, des danses, une architecture, entre d'autres dynamiques de conquête touristique, égale il succède avec la reproduction de sons relatifs à l'exclusivité, confidentialité et sécurité pour le touriste à l'intérieur de l'ensemble. Toute construction de la réalité est réalisée dans un espace et le temps défini à partir de l'imaginaire, puisqu'il existe l'objectif de captiver le visiteur, à l'intérieur d'une série de montages continuels où la ligne de coupure sera éliminée entre des montages, en changeant la fiction en réalité pour le touriste, le montage correct et la scène indiquée, ils marquent l'ordre constant des montages. Of the chunk of images made and rescued of the natural or real environment, a plot relation was conforming across the page lay-out to the suitable sequence of each one of the scenes formed by the imaginary one, to join and to channel the montages for the fulfillment of the representation in a movie. Of the most out-standing examples they are the creations from the imaginary one in the United Arab Emirates represented in the hotels as tower hilton baynunah, jumeirah Beach burj al-arab, hotel w, hotel apearon island y hotel eta, which expose services as purchases of luxury, centers spa with exclusive facilities for the sport and the free time, equipped rooms with the last technology. The colors and the forms are distinguished for standing out before the Arabic culture, but it is important to indicate that each of these megadevelopments will mark with this series of montages, which will allow to arrange the series of chunks of images made before the imagined fantasy. The megadevelopments differ for creating tourist scenes from the imaginary one, emphasizing the interlock across the search of the safety concept, with a marked interest to shape new communities, likewise elements like them I access they are guarded by safety personnel that was indicating the welcome to the tourist, Without knowing that it will be guided and monitored by secret video cameras in the mass of the building, also safety elements are distinguished for the mobility and accessibility to the set, emphasizing airway, navally ó terrestrial, the tour to the interior being marked under an stairs of descending level to beach level, there was showing each of the tourist scenes mounted to indicate the tour to the tourist to the interior of the set.