Speculative feminism and the shifting frontiers of bioscience: envisioning reproductive futures with synthetic gametes through the ethnographic method

Abstract

Scientists are developing a technique called in vitro gametogenesis or IVG to generate synthetic gametes for research and, potentially, for treating infertility. What would it mean for feminist concerns over the future of reproductive practice and biotechnological development if egg and sperm cells could be produced in laboratory conditions? In this article, I take on the question by discussing the emerging technique of IVG through the speculative feminist analysis of ambiguous reproductive futures. Feminist cultural and science studies scholars have explored the transformative effects of biomedicine on reproduction through science fiction novels and other cultural products. I theorise the speculative and visionary in biomedicine in the context of ethnographic methodology by drawing on ‘thought experiments’ conducted with stem cell scientists as shared acts of future-oriented contemplation. I develop the figure of SF proposed by Donna Haraway to investigate how science facts and speculative fabulation together shape futurities of reproduction. I propose including shifting frontiers in feminist thinking of the SFs in bioscience. Biomedical research aims to shift the borders between what is known and not known in reproductive biology, subsequently raising new technical, ethical and political issues in terms of stratified reproduction. The article shows that synthetic gametes are anticipated to intensify selective procreation. Simultaneously, IVG is seen to forge new biogenetic relationships and possibilities for non-normative reproduction and kin-making. Following Haraway, I argue that by ‘staying with the trouble’ of these biotechnological visions, feminist speculative analytics on technoscience offers a valuable tool to envision more hopeful and equal futures together with scientists.

Living temporality: Speculative engagements with elderly people on bioscience and the body

“…Recent speculative approaches inspired by Stengers' thought have tapped into this theoretical-methodological gap (e.g., Guggenheim et al, 2017;Wilkie and Michael, 2018;Wilkie et al, 2017). Contributing to this scholarship, our previous studies (Meskus, 2023;Mäkelin and Hautamäki, 2021) have highlighted the fruitfulness of speculative research in resisting a 'future that presents itself as obvious, plausible, and normal', as Stengers (2010: 10) puts it. In this article, the critique of instrumentalized rationality in science, developed in and through speculative thinking, is crucial in addressing the questions of experienced time in the context of aging and biotechnology.…”

“…The idea of shaping the human genome of future generations brought up the history of eugenic practices and the challenges of limiting the use of these biotechnologies only to some diseases and anomalies. This highlights how temporality materializes through collective traumatic histories such as that of eugenics (Dengen, 2005) and how the prospects of biotechnological futures are persistently addressed through the history of racial hygienic practices (Meskus, 2005(Meskus, , 2023.…”

Speculative approaches in social science and design research: Methodological implications of working in ‘the gap’ of uncertainty

“…The brief instance at the beginning of fieldwork reported above became a cue for including a speculative element in the study, which led to multiple conversations on the prospect of creating gametes in the laboratory (Meskus, 2021). The encounter with the bioscientist reconfigured the researcher’s understanding of what was important in the study.…”

“…Recent STS studies have investigated how speculative thinking might be applied in empirical research contexts from, for example, assisted reproduction to emergency provision and energy transition (e.g., Guggenheim et al, 2017; Meskus, 2021; Wilkie and Michael, 2018). In design research, speculative thinking has been used to explore and co-create visions and material objects that comment on, for instance, robotics, tissue engineering and electricity consumption (e.g., Auger, 2012; Dunne and Raby, 2013; Mazé, 2019).…”

The Reproductive Bodies of Postgenomics

“…As an emerging scientific paradigm, the cultural figures, healthcare practices, and legal formations stemming from postgenomics are taking shape but have yet to stabilize. Part of the scholarly task this moment throws up for feminist theorists, then, is critical imagining—engaging in the work of “speculative fabulation” to shape expansive tales of postgenomic relationality (Haraway 2013; Meskus 2021). Postgenomics has been critiqued for molecularizing environments and minimizing broader collective conditions of reproduction (Lappé 2016; Richardson et al 2014), yet this tendency is not over-inscribed in biological matter itself.…”