Doing infertility: an agential realist approach to the experiences of women with ‘atypical’ development of the reproductive system
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/jnmr.v8.43453Abstract
The current focus of feminist literature on the workings of new reproductive technologies has overshadowed a conclusion that also follows from approaching questions related to bodily reproductive capacities from a perspective informed by the relational ontologies advocated by feminist new materialisms, namely: like fertility, infertility is not an independent, strictly biological property inscribed a priori in human bodies, but rather consists of a phenomenon performatively enacted through specific material-discursive practices. To further explore this argument, this article proposes a reading of embodied experiences of infertility through Karen Barad’s (2007) agential realism and their theory of posthumanist performativity. The text is structured around excerpts from interviews with women diagnosed as infertile due to Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome. We seek to demonstrate how an ethico-onto-epistemological shift from “things” to material-discursive phenomena opens up important possibilities for developing new understandings of infertility that can overcome the limitations of both traditional biomedical and sociological approaches.
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