Potential(s) Trade in Uterine Transplants

Thursday, November 21

8:00 AM - 9:45 AM

Location: Vancouver CC WEST, Room 111

Presenter(s)

AW

Andrea Whittaker

ARC Future Fellow
Monash University

Hope has emerged as a central element in the discursive, regulatory and performative choreographies through which reproductive research is legitimized, governed and ﬁnanced, and biological materials are procured and distributed (cf. Rubin 2008, Rose 2007). Brown (2005) has suggested that emerging therapeutic markets have shifted from regimes of truth to “regimes of hope,” in which speculative and imaginative invocations of future beneﬁts are elevated to a source of authority and to a guiding principle for economic and scientiﬁc action. Harvey (2009, p. 54). The development of uterine transplants is framed in such a manner as a potential treatment for patients with absolute uterus factor infertility (AUFI) which affects approximately 3-5% of women (Branstromm et al 2018). In this paper, I explore the definitions and articulations of reproductive potentials within a regime of hope surrounding uterine transplants. Potential reproductivity positions donors and receivers in particular ways and generates technological enchantment simultaneously empowering and oppressing women involved. With some Indian companies already spruiking the possibilities of uterine transplants as an international trade, I consider how this potential(s) trade articulates with post-Fordist capitalism.