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6. Seeing the Phenomenon: The Radical Disembodiment of In Vitro Human Reproduction

  • Dana S. Belu (author)
Chapter of: Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology(pp. 143–163)

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Metadata
Title6. Seeing the Phenomenon
SubtitleThe Radical Disembodiment of In Vitro Human Reproduction
ContributorDana S. Belu (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0421.06
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0421/chapters/10.11647/obp.0421.06
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightDana S. Belu
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-10-16
Long abstractThis chapter discusses the radical technologization of women’s reproductive body in ART or assisted reproductive technology. This discussion centers around the claim that neither phenomenology nor social constructivism is by itself able to discuss this technologization. The reason for this is that phenomenology is insufficiently empirically sensitive to the what is involved in ART, whereas (critical) social constructivism remains trapped in a ‘productivist’ dialectic that misses relations between nature and technology that fall outside the scope of production. By critically discussing and re-combining Heidegger’s and Feenberg’s work, the chapter claims that ART frames women’s bodies neither as subjects, nor objects of technical action, but as resources. However, such technologization is itself forgotten, leading not only to self-objectification, but, particularly in the case of IVG, rather than the subject becoming become a more or less stable object, the subject/object boundary dissolves altogether. The chapter explores the notion of vocation, as well as Heidegger’s meditative questioning of technology to explore the limits of such technologization.
Page rangepp. 143–163
Print length21 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Dana S. Belu

(author)

Dana S. Belu is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Dominguez Hills, USA, where she teaches in the Philosophy Department and in The Women’s Studies Department. She is the author of Heidegger, Reproductive Technology & The Motherless Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and of numerous publications on feminist phenomenologies of reproduction. Her latest article ‘Thinking about Mothers Thinking: Maternal Authenticity in Ruddick and Heidegger’ is forthcoming in The Question of Gender in Being and Time, edited by Patricia Glazebrook and Suzanne Claxton (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024), https://www. csudh.edu/philosophy/faculty/dana-belu. Professor Belu serves as an Associate Editor for csuglobal, an online and interdisciplinary journal that interfaces the California State University system with California and with the globe, https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/ csuglobaljournal/

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