Professor Catherine Waldby: The Biopolitics of Reproduction

The UCSC Department of Feminist Studies Presents:

Professor Catherine Waldby
University of Sydney

"The Biopolitics of Reproduction: Post-Fordist Biotechnology
and Women's Clinical Labour"

Wednesday, October 3, 2007
4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
Humanities 1, room 210

Professor Catherine Waldby is International Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, and collaborating partner of the Global Biopolitics Research Group http://www.globalbiopolitics.org. She researches and publishes in social studies of biomedicine and the life sciences. Her most recent books are, with Robert Mitchell Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism (2006 Duke University Press) and with Brian Salter and Herbert Gotwiess The global politics of human embryonic stem cell research, (Palgrave 2008 forthcoming).

This paper investigates some contemporary rearticulations of female reproductive biology, particularly the advent of assisted reproductive technology and the centrality of reproductive tissue (embryos, oöcytes, cord blood) to the regenerative medicine industries. We argue that while nation states have lost traction over female reproductive biology and are less and less able to mobilise it for nation-building, it is increasingly available for private investment and capitalisation in the bioeconomy. Focusing on global markets for women's oöcytes (unfertilised eggs), we explore the consequences of framing women's contribution to the biotechnology industries as labour, in historical continuity with earlier colonial forms of female bodily labour, and cognate to other forms of feminised global production.

Sponsorship: Departments of History of Consciousness, Philosophy, Science Studies Cluster, Center for Cultural Studies, Institute for Humanities Research, Center for Justice, Tolerance and Community

For more information please contact Feminist Studies at 459-4324.