Body Talk : Rhetoric, Technology, Reproduction

by Lay, Mary M.; Gurak, Laura J.; Gravon, Clare; Myntti, Cynthia

• ISBN13: 9780299167905
• ISBN10: 0299167909
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr

Summary

In recent decades, human reproduction has been transformed in ways never imagined in 1900; new methods of contraception, treatments for fertility and sexual dysfunction, and new diagnostic tools have rapidly become an integral part of our culture and discourse. Body Talk explores the rhetoric of reproductive technology throughout the twentieth century, examining the ways discourse about these technologies has shaped thinking about reproduction and women's bodies, framed public policy, and empowered or marginalized points of view. The chapters in Body Talk delve into such varied topics as the ownership and control of knowledge about birth, societal definitions of normality and pathology, definitions of the self, issues regarding granting rights as citizens to fetuses, the rights of mothers, and views about the relationship between technology and religion.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
Helen E. Longino
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction: The Rhetoric of Reproductive Technologies	3	(26)
Mary M. Lay
Laura J. Gurak
Clare Gravon
Cynthia Myntti
PART ONE HISTORICAL BASES OF REPRODUCTIVE DISCOURSE
Figuring the Reproductive Woman: The Construction of Professional Identity in Eighteenth-Century British Midwifery Texts	29	(20)
Jeanette Herrle-Fanning
Minding the Uterus: C. T. Javert and Psychosomatic Abortion	49	(18)
Kathleen Marie Dixon
Gym Periods and Monthly Periods: Concepts of Menstruation in American Physical Education, 1900-1940	67	(31)
Martha H. Verbrugge
God Willed It! Gynecology at the Checkout Stand: Reproductive Technology in the Women's Service Magazine, 1977-1996	98	(27)
Chloe Diepenbrock
PART TWO REPRODUCTION, LANGUAGE, AND MEDICAL MODELS
Women's Reproductive Choices and the Genetic Model of Medicine	125	(17)
Celeste M. Condit
Bodies, Minds, and Failures: Images of Women in Infertility Clinics	142	(19)
Laura Shanner
The Politics of Language in Surgical Contraception	161	(23)
Lyn Turney
Baby Talk: The Rhetorical Production of Maternal and Fetal Selves	184	(23)
Eugenia Georges
Lisa M. Mitchell
PART THREE REPRODUCTION AND LEGAL/POLICY ISSUES
Medical Insurance as Bio-Power: Law and the Normalization of (In)fertility	207	(19)
Elizabeth C. Britt
The Legal Status of Direct-Entry Midwives in the United States: Balancing Tradition with Modern Medicine	226	(18)
Mary M. Lay
Hot Tomalley: Women's Bodies and Environmental Politics in the State of MaineBeverly Sauer	244	(18)
The Construction of Public Health in the FDA Hearings on Silicone Breast Implants	262	(15)
Mary Thompson
Afterword: Technologies of the Exterior, Technologies of the Interior-Can We Expand the Discourse of Reproductive Studies?	277	(24)
Robbie Davis-Floyd
Contributors	301	(4)
Index	305