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Chapter 3 - Capital Reproduction

Maternity and Productivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2021

Sherryl Vint
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Summary

This chapter interrogates practices of biotechnology related to pregnancy and reproduction. Taking note of a recent proliferation of speculative texts about compromised fertility and draconian measures to control women’s reproductive freedoms, alongside continued legislative attempts to restrict access to abortion and other tools of family planning, this chapter asks what it means that we have become so obsessed with the life of the unborn fetus. Through an analysis of practices in the fertility industry, and especially the transnational market in surrogacy services, this chapter reads two speculative fiction works about changed fertility: Jane Rogers’ The Testament of Jessie Lamb and Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God. It argues that increasingly restrictions that prevent those in the Global North from accessing surrogacy and related fertility services from those in the Global South speak to a perceived crisis in reproductive futurity. The plethora of narratives about a crisis in fertility, then, speak to a racialized anxiety about the scarce “supply” of reproductive capacity: whose fertility and family structures will be preserved into the future?

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Capital Reproduction
  • Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • Online publication: 16 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382.004
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Capital Reproduction
  • Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • Online publication: 16 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Capital Reproduction
  • Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • Online publication: 16 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382.004
Available formats
×