developing/introducing something “new.”
This chapter supplies an initial insight into theories and notions that informed this research. It provides information on the bilingual approach to language, and offers initial insights into how stories and data studied relate to the expanding field examined. It presents a first understanding of some of the causes that affected the choice of inviting considerations on the interrelatedness between body and Leib into the analysis. The relationality between body and Leib, as theorized by, for example, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, provided a theoretical matrix and an “atmosphere” for the analysis within this study as it [35] evolves from chapter to chapter inviting additional theoretical frameworks in to assist and inform the analysis (Merleau-Ponty 2012 and 2001).
Theoretically speaking, designing this study began with an interest in the multi-layered social, cultural, and political implications of RGTs and biomedicine. At the beginning, it was my concern to pay specific attention to the various “makings” and social meanings of the relationship between the embryo/fetus and women in contemporary biological, medical, and socio-medical discourses, including art. Later, it became crucial, due to the rapid ethical as well as political challenging technological developments in the field of RGTs, to include wider developments in the field of biomedicine into the analysis of this study in order to allow for the establishment of a thorough analytical picture of the complexity of issues in the field of RGTs and biomedicine. Or, saying it differently, it became important to enhance the wingspread.
During the first decade of the new millennium, social science research within and about the biomedical sciences increased extensively. Funding bodies, such as the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom, the Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Germany, invested significantly in research that explores the social implications and public perceptions of developments in biomedical and genetic research. In addition to research that addresses broadly conceptualized topics (such as biotechnology or genetic testing), during the period in which much of the primary research for this project was conducted (2003 – 2007) specific funding streams were implemented to support research specifically on emerging technologies (such as stem cell research and medical imaging technologies). The amount and foci of the funding which has been made available, highlight on one hand, that topics such as biomedicine and genetics are not considered easy to grasp from either a public or a social scientific perspective and, on the other hand, that it is in the interest of society (and science) to acquire a grasp on new developments.
This introduction to the theoretical considerations of the study includes stories of events, which took place during my fieldwork. In recounting these stories, I pull in “still images” of the cultural background of this study, and place the frameworks that I am applying into an interactive relationship with these stories. Some of these will be expanded further in the analytical chapters.
[36] 2.1 On the Interest in Messiness and Inclusion
“Traveling through time is just like
traveling through space”
(Carroll 2009: online).
“Perhaps attending to these questions
would allow teacher-researchers […]
to embrace
the messiness
of practitioner research and the
impossibility of disentangling
research and practice”
(Steinberg and Down 2020: online source).
In a publication distributed after a few years of social scientific research in the field of RGT and biomedicine, and after having finished the second phase of collecting conversational data for this project, I stated that the field in which I was conducting research was a discursive mess (Rothmüller 2005a). From a nearby location in the UK, I observed developments in the field of genetic research, especially stem cell research, being publicly discussed and medically performed.19 Within the same timeframe, I participated in conversations with women about their experiential and theoretical encounters with RGTs. I took part in international conferences and became involved in an interdisciplinary discussion about how to ethically frame and understand these developments in the social sciences, hoping that my involvement would leave the components of my research in an orderly and clearer relationship to each other. Yet, at the time, discussions at conferences or symposia pointed to the fact that while technologies were expanding, the development of terminology that could tackle (in an inclusive manner) social and cultural impacts of the global fabric of inequalities that these technologies create was yet lacking. During this time, I also became a member of the activist group Reprokult, which, during meetings with its interdisciplinary and activist members, worked intensely on “naming” practices and thus on developing a language that can point to complex dynamics.20 [37] I came to understand that I was gaining much medical knowledge about genetic research. Nonetheless, I also became aware that in aiming to know more about women’s embodiment and identity in RGTs and biomedical practice, I would need an open and innovative approach that could integrate the analysis of new developments as they emerged and facilitate an analysis of the connecting links between new developments, individual experiences, and societal challenges.
I’ve stated in the last chapter that I wish to acknowledge the interrelatedness of techniques and that I aim to examine the different meanings and understandings they hold. In order to ensure a clear centering of the study, yet also to work from the margins of arising issues, the two checkpoints onto which I have positioned my analysis are: the focus on women, and the introduction of notions of Leib into the conceptual approach to this study. Although this study has a focus on women, it purposefully includes the analysis of stories and developments with male protagonists at their center.21 These serve, for example, the task to extract information on how biomedicine applies to human kind in a gendered manner. Including these stories will furthermore provide insight into how biomedical practices increase complexities as far as “gendering” and “hierarchically ordering” people, technologies, materialities, and outcomes go. Hence, although the analytical sections within this study include the analysis of data that at first seems not to match the focus on women, including such data serves to gain a better understanding of global, political, cultural, ethical, and historical developments in the field of biomedicine that are crucial to developing a better understanding of how biomedical practices affect us as humans, but oftentimes create different challenges on various levels for women. In sum, I chose to involve and embrace messiness as discursive strategy aiding inclusive analysis. For example, to include stories with male protagonists and not to focus on a single technology are outcomes of this choice.
The borders of various medical practices, as well as the legal framing of the same, became “frayed” during the time of data collection and in the context [38] of fast developments in the field of RGTs and biomedicine. The frayed “ends” are interesting, as they are also the connecting points of practices or legal framings. It is also in light of this, that my research connects the analysis within the field of RGTs and biomedicine with developments in related medical practices and research areas that similarly rely upon research or medical practices that mobilize and replace bodily substances in space (for example, from one person to another) or in time (for example, egg cells from a 2005 cycle that are used in a 2006 treatment cycle for the same individual’s fertility treatment) or add non- organic components into a body to “enhance” future performances of bodily functions (such as “prosthetic” memory microchips).
The inclusion of developments in related research fields permits a broader perspective within the analysis, and facilitates furthering understanding of how developments in the field of RGTs and biomedicine potentially hold specific meanings for women during what is often referred to as their “reproductive years.” This approach, moreover, allows to maintain a focus on developments in the UK and Germany, but also to highlight the fact that biomedical practice and research take place within a context of globalizing developments that change the historicity of relationships between countries and influence “new” forms of competition and injustices between them and their citizens. This broader perspective can address