Description
Berghahn Books Nameless Relations Anonymity Melanesia and Reproductive Gift Exchange between British Ova Donors and Recipients 2005 Edition by Monica Konrad
Based on the author's fieldwork at assisted conception clinics in England in the mid-1990s, this is the first ethnographic study of the new procreative practices of anonymous ova and embryo donation. Giving voice to both groups of women participating in the demanding donation experience - the donors on the one side and the ever-hopeful IVF recipients on the other - Konrad shows how one dimension of the new reproductive technologies involves an unfamiliar relatedness between nameless and untraceable procreative strangers. Offsetting informants' local narratives against traditional Western folk models of the 'sexed' reproductive body, the book challenges some of the basic assumptions underlying conventional biomedical discourse of altruistic donation that clinicians and others promote as "gifts of life." It brings together a wide variety of literatures from social anthropology, social theory, cultural studies of science and technology, and feminist bioethics to discuss the relationship between recent developments in biotechnology and changing conceptions of personal origins, genealogy, kinship, biological ownership and notions of bodily integrity. Table of contents :- List of FiguresPrefacePART I: THE SECRETS IN THE GIFTChapter 1. What is Concealed Inside an Anonymously Donated Gamete?IncoexistenceInside OutART, Exteriorisation and Forms of FacelessnessFuture Feminisms'Cosmic Egg' RevisitedOva Donors and RecipientsFinding Method in the Oblique Implicit Links and Multiple AudiencesChapter 2. Anonymity and the Way of JuxtapositionAnonymity/tabooAnonymity/opennessAnonymity/reciprocityAnonymity/partibilityAnonymity/transiliencePART II: IN THE NAME OF THE UN-NAMEDChapter 3. Donors ICome Superovulate!Free Gift Emerging'Not a Hardship at All'Testimonies of AssistanceIntimately ImpersonalAnd Free Gift RecedingBecoming SpecialPrestige and 'Fame''It's Something I Must Do!'Summary LinkChapter 4. Donors IICategories of De-identification and Degrees of AnonymisationStrong, Indeterminate and Weak AnonymityKnowledge Outcomes and the Form of the Return GiftNeither Inalienable nor ForgettableRemote Parenting?Negotiated Maternity and the Ambiguous ProgenetrixChapter 5. Donors IIIDonating Agency, Extension and Intersubjective SpacetimeReproducibility and Relations of Non-relationsOdelle: Genes by ProxyPolicy Link - Penny: Relations as Ripple Effects Policy Link - Rita: Donating AdoptionPolicy Link - Meena: Receiving PardonSummary LinkDispossession, Effraction and NontraceabilityWhat Goes Round Comes roundWhat Goes around Comes around (Again)Chapter 6. Recipients IGift Elasticity and the Infertility IndustryEgg-sharing, Egg-giving and Egg DonationAnonymity, Kinship Distance and 'Poison' in the Gift'Like with Like' and the Equivalence of MatchingDegrees of Information and Informational GapsThe Idea of 'Donor-release'Mismatching'You See What You Want to See'Blood Food LinesSummary LinkChapter 7. Recipients IIAccountability and Blood ManipulationsRevealing-while-keeping the Secret (Ella's Effacement)Whatever Happened to You?Money Manipulations and Ova PathwaysTaming Contingency (I): Ova Pathways and Directing FlowTaming Contingency (II): Ranking between RecipientsHow Ova and Embryo Pathways Make Half-siblingsPolicy LinkSummary LinkChapter 8. Recipients IIIHyper-kinship within a Remaindered WorldEliciting HyperembryoRe-donation, Refusal and 'Disowning Decisions'Sacrificial Keeping-while-giving and Donation to ResearchObviating a Compounded LifeLiquidating the Third PartyRe-donation as Continuous GiftingSummary LinkPART III: APPLICATIONSChapter 9. Unconcealing Extensional TransilienceHyper-embryo into Infinite Partibility and the Sourcing of Embryonic Stem CellsPolicy LinkTransilient Kinship and Embryo Donor-conceived ChildrenSummary LinkChapter 10. Unconcealing Regenerative TransilienceSpotlight on the Final FrontierEnvisioning the Problem of Ovarian Tissue and the Life-giving DeathReconstituted Persons and the Extensional ImaginaryHow it is Imagined Breath Circulates between PersonsHow it is Imagined the Unborn Sibling Blood-donor Child Will Make New LifeDiscussionChapter 11. Conclusion: Relations of Non-relationsAppendix I: Donor Biographical ProfilesAppendix II: Recipient Biographical ProfilesAppendix III: Treatment ProtocolBibliographyIndex