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Reading in vitro:
Conceiving Selfhood through Assisted Reproductive Technology

“Reading in vitro” focuses on the theoretical and embodied implications of in vitro fertilization (IVF) through the case study of my mother, or more specifically, the case study constituted by my mother's writing on becoming-pregnant, which she recorded in a diary during the year of 1998. By following the object of the conception diary as both an academic and narrative source of information, this project attempts to understand IVF as a technical though equally embodied process, one which produces new forms of consciousness as well as life. I argue that the transformation of time, personhood, and imagination exemplified by my mother’s writing about IVF demonstrates the emergence of a non-universal gestational subject, one which is assisted by technical aids but must be attended to in its narrative specificity.

about

Scout Katherine Turkel holds a degree in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Born in California, Scout’s work can be found in Chicago Review, Oversound, Tagvverk, bæst: a journal of queer forms & affects, and elsewhere.

e-mail: scout [dot] katherine [at] gmail [dot] com

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