Abstract
This chapter explores narratives of kinship about both organ donation and donor sperm conception. We frame the chapter through a focus on the instrumentalization of non-human animals with regard to breeding, and from there explore how such instrumentalization is both implied in, and resisted by, narratives of organ and sperm donation. By exploring how both organs and sperm are treated as synecdoches for whole people, we discuss the complex accounts of kinship provided by a sample of recipients of cadaveric organs and a sample of donor-conceived people taken from television programmes and documentaries.
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Notes
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Prior to the Renaissance the view that the heart was the source of the soul, thinking, memory, emotions, and personality was prevalent, especially in the Egyptian period and in Europe in the Middle Ages. That much influential literature was written when the heart’s function was significantly more expansive than simply to pump blood may explain why this association has persisted.
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Riggs, D.W., Peel, E. (2016). Donor Connections. In: Critical Kinship Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50505-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50505-7_5
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