Biopolitics, trauma and the public fetus: An analysis of preconception care

Abstract

In 2006, the US Center for Disease Control rolled out guidelines for 'preconception care,' institutionalizing the use of the public fetus as a fetish object in relation to which the cultural body can disavow and contain the post 9/11 contagion of annihilation anxiety. Integrating Bergson's ideas of duration with cultural and psychoanalytic theories of time and subjectivity, this article will examine these guidelines and the ways in which they become alluring as forms of traumatic repetition instilling hypervigilance as normality. The preconception care guidelines are a perfect example of Clarke's ideas of biomedicalization, as women's bodies emerge through practices of self and biomedical surveillance and risk management strategies in relation to the future fetus. This future orientation functions not only to disavow, displace and contain vulnerability, but also creates a future in order to attempt to go on being in the face of trauma and humiliation. Subjectivity (2013) 6, 153-172.

Exploring the troubling temporalities produced by fetal personhood

“…Creative meaning-making emerges from the capacity to link the past, present and future, but not as a linear, unidimensional trajectory. The present is full and attached to multiple, divergent pasts, presents, and futures (Gentile, 2007(Gentile, , 2013aDinshaw, 2012); these temporal distinctions are in continuous motion and shaped through a process of differentiation -a form of connectedness, not separation (Gentile, 2007). Embodied subjectivity is produced through temporal motion, traveling from past to present to future, building layers of continuous and simultaneous "pre-" or "non-" representational affective echoes, not sequences, of experiences.…”

“…Embodied subjectivity is produced through temporal motion, traveling from past to present to future, building layers of continuous and simultaneous "pre-" or "non-" representational affective echoes, not sequences, of experiences. Affect recognition and regulation can be seen as "a temporary, constantly unfolding collection of momentary, fleeting instances of equilibrium suspended in a field of virtual partialities" (Parisi, 2004, p. 42), co-emerging through accumulation and innovation via our capacities for space and time (see Gentile, 2007Gentile, , 2011Gentile, , 2013a.…”

From the Miracle Baby to Baby Frankenstein—Ambivalence and ARTs: Introduction

“…In a culture organized around ideals of reprofuturity (Halberstam, 2005) where some babies are objects of consumerism and fetish (Gentile, 2013), while others are cast aside as excessive (Oliver, 2012), ARTs take on particularly loaded meanings in the cultural and clinical spaces. Here we attempt to engage some of these representations to further their analysis.…”

Preconceiving Life: Response to Gentile’s “Troubling Temporalities”

“…2 For the biomanagement of all premenopausal women in the name of future pregnancies, see Gentile (2013). Correspondence should be sent to Ann Pellegrini, Ph.D., New York University, 721 Broadway, Room 605, New York, NY 10003.…”

“…Emplotting health care as risk management, the guidelines reframe women's and girls' health care as their right and responsible care for "the future" (Gentile, 2013). The preconception care guidelines enlist women in self-surveillance and hypervigilance in the name of a healthy future and good feeling.…”