The Organizational Construction of the Body in Assisted Reproductive Technologies

Abstract

This chapter explores the relation between biotechnologies and the body through the case of assisted reproduction. On the basis of a case study realized in an artificial reproductive technologies centre in Italy, this paper explores how the organizational construction of the body takes place, providing some instances and illustrations of working and organizing practices as a locus where this construction is materially performed: how bodies are subjected to a series of organizational practices whereby the organization inscribes them in its spaces and produces ‘organizational bodies’; how the passage from body to fluids (follicular and seminal) is done in the laboratory practices; how gametes (oocytes and spermatozoa) are manipulated and ‘transformed’ into embryos; and how finally they return to the body.

The aim of the paper is to reflect on the complex relationships between the construction of the body and biotechnology, organization and institution, in the process of assisted reproduction, in which the patient body, especially the female body, is fragmented and reassembled, and subtly and smoothly removed as the centre of the scene. The organization is inscribed in and performed through the body, whichbecomes liquid and is transformed into different things during accomplishment of the organizational practices.