Colonizing the (Reproductive) Future: The Discursive Construction of ARTS as Technologies of Self

Experiences like infertility and the birth of a child affected by genetic disease can be extremely disruptive to an individual’s ontological security, that is, her confidence in the continuity and stability of her self-identity, as well as the dependability and security of her environment.¹ In response to the threats that modern life poses to our ontological security, Giddens argues that individuals living in a risk society cultivate trust in expert systems and risk assessment as means of maintaining security. He argues that “thinking in terms of risk certainly has its unsettling aspects . . . but it is also a means of seeking to stabilize outcomes, a mode of colonizing the future.”² I argue that a number of assisted reproductive technologies (arts) have been presented as tools for colonizing the reproductive future.³ To this end I will analyze the journalistic construction of selected arts—prenatal screening, in vitro fertilization (ivf), and egg freezing—as technologies of the self, expert systems for individual risk management, and sources of reflexive risk.⁴

Significant strains within feminist scholarship have debated the implications and potential of arts, often casting them as tools of either feminist liberation or patriarchal oppression.⁵ As these technologies continue to develop and their use continues to spread, their impacts and potential continue to evolve. Much of the feminist debate on the subject of arts is limited by an understanding of risk that is either undertheorized or missing altogether. This article aims to contribute to a more productive theorization of arts by drawing on a specified concept of risk, as it has been conceptualized in the risk society and governmentality literature.⁶ A longitudinal study of unfolding risk narratives in the journalistic coverage of the management of age-related fertility risks through the use of selected reproductive technologies provides a valuable new approach to the analysis of these technologies. My analysis of these narratives illuminates the discursive construction of privileged candidates for reproduction and modes of family formation. Further, I identify the central role that reflexivity plays in the journalistic construction of these technologies, which is best understood in relation to risk society literature on reflexive modernity. Finally, I identify the ways in which narratives of reproductive choice and empowerment are co-opted in relation to arts to serve neoliberal rather than feminist ends.

Risk Society and Governmentality

Risk society is characterized by the disintegration of traditional value systems, which comprises an integral element of the epochal discontinuity within modernity between the classical (or “first”) modernity of the industrial nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the reflexive (or “second”) modernity of the postindustrial, globalized late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.⁷ Whereas, under the conditions of first modernity, subject positioning in terms of social categories like gender, class, and occupation rendered life theoretically stable and predictable, under the conditions of second modernity these normative trajectories become increasingly flexible.⁸ Although this increasing flexibility can be perceived as liberating and empowering for those privileged enough to have access to these newfound choices, it can also be disorienting and unsettling. The use of arts in relation to age-related fertility concerns is an exemplary case of the type of risk central to risk society theory as age-related infertility and its treatment both, in part, arise from and become constitutive of the detraditionalization of life course trajectories and the proliferation of reproductive choice for certain privileged groups.⁹

While these choices may be experienced as empowering, even as they remain limited by institutional and cultural constraints, they also produce uncertainty, contingency, and an awareness of risk. In risk society risk becomes inescapable and omnipresent; every choice becomes laden with the potential for gains and losses, benefits and harms. Giddens argues that the very existence of alternatives pushes all social actors—even those without privileged access to choice—to view their own life courses and self-identity in terms of life planning and risk assessment, which becomes a means of reestablishing ontological security through the colonization of the future.¹⁰ Further, risk society theory emphasizes the shift from the...