Playing Dolly: Technocultural Formations, Fantasies, and Fictions of Assisted Reproduction

by E. Ann Kaplan (Editor), Susan Merrill Squier (Editor)

The actual and potential techniques of assisted reproduction, from surrogate motherhood, egg donation, and prenatal testing, to cloning, ectogenesis, and interspecies reproduction, have shaken our understanding of what constitutes "natural" procreation. In the early 1990s, discourse focused on the moral and ethical issues posed by birth technology innovations. Less that a decade later, enormous changes have taken place in the way reproduction is represented, discussed, and understood. Ethical debates may be muted for some by awareness of the benefits assisted reproduction provides. However, the volume reveals that assisted reproduction is catalyzing major shifts in the construction of the disciplines. The essays in this book reflect these emerging disciplinary geographies shaped by the cultural, economic, psychological, ecological, and commercial implications of these new technologies. In genres ranging from the biomedical and sociocultural to the fictional, the contributors explore the bodies- affected by "playing dolly."

The contributors are Dion Farquhar, Leslie Dwyer, Angela Wall, Pamela L. Moore, Anne Balsamo, Susan Squier, E. Ann Kaplan, Kay Torney Souter, and John Wiltshire, Vivian Sobchack, Susan Stryker, Karyn Valerius, Charis Thompson Cussins, Richard Nash and Gabriele Schwab.

273 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1999