Sacred Assets: Christian Logics of Reproductive Remainder Economies

• In Event: Capitalizing Fertility: Feminist STS Approaches to Reproductive Bioeconomies - I

Abstract

Frozen human embryos leftover from in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures have become a favorite example among science and technology studies scholars and medical anthropologists theorizing what happens at the junctures of capitalism, reproductive medicine, and biotechnologies. A range of “bio-concepts” have flourished in recent years to explain the role of capitalist logics in circulating and valuing entities like embryos within global markets. Despite some observations of Christian discourses within contemporary bioeconomies (e.g. rhetoric of salvation), few scholars in this tradition have addressed Christianity as a constitutive ingredient shaping the U.S. tissue trade. Drawing on ethnographic research (2008-2018) in the United States within programs that manage frozen embryos, including a premier biobank for human embryonic stem cell research and the world’s first “embryo adoption” program established by evangelical Christians, this paper offers a reconsideration of feminist scholarship on bioeconomies by putting Christian logics at the center of analysis. Determining where embryos belong categorically and practically has inspired new forms of expertise, discourses, and practices through which these opposing groups came to share deep commitments to regeneration—a revaluing process of severing embryos from their past relations and redirecting their potentialities toward new futures. By examining the secularized and explicit Christian logics that subtend both practices, this paper contributes to a growing body of literature about the challenges of valuing potential—an increasingly common phenomenon within societies shaped by speculative forms of capitalism and Christianity.

Author

• Risa Cromer, Purdue University