Biopower and Precarity: Meeting Embodied Self in the Discourses of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Ukraine

Sammanfattning: In this thesis I examine the connection between female embodiment and subjectivation, technologization of reproduction and rationalities of government in Ukraine, where assisted reproductive technologies (ART) were introduced not so long ago, but have already become part of the lived experience of numerous women and heated a large debate in society about the nature of women, motherhood, national duty, citizenship and demographic crisis. Moreover, the study I accomplish is necessitated by the growing importance of Ukraine as a colonial market of cheap donor egg cells and as a target of transnational reproductive travel engendered by commercial surrogacy industry. I applied the concepts of biopower and precarity to analyse the subjectivation of women who undergo in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and reveal which power technologies act on their bodies and subjects. In order to give an account of a plurality of meanings that constitute the social reality of ART, I have analysed three discourses, in particular the discourses of the state, medical professionals and IVF patients. To gather the necessary data I have conducted semi-structured interviews with directors of infertility clinics and women who completed IVF and considered articles in professional medical journals, ministerial programmes and orders, legal framework with regard to the use of ART.