tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26617237.post115326067959020212..comments2018-09-10T18:54:29.916-04:00Comments on littleblackbook: Always: the Queerness of a Reproductive Framelexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08265539602839655150noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26617237.post-1153332120951107512006-07-19T14:02:00.000-04:002006-07-19T14:02:00.000-04:00(the previous comment came over email from my belo...(the previous comment came over email from my beloved student advisor when the comment link wasn't working...so now it looks even more like I'm talking to myself...but here was my response)<BR/><BR/>interesting that you send this email today...as i'm reading Dorothy<BR/>Roberts Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of<BR/>Liberty (1997).<BR/><BR/>I think my suggestion might be that the use of the machine isn't<BR/>confined to queers...but that queer appropriation of the machine<BR/>reveals the obscured techno-mediation already at work...nahmean? the<BR/>narrative itself is a technology that either produces the status<BR/>quo...or not. so the photocopier is a convenient way of linking the<BR/>process of narrative making and the process of publication...but<BR/>whether the technological link is spraypaint or the pen or the voice<BR/>box the narrative is a machine that makes something.<BR/><BR/>So Roberts has a whole chapter on "new reproduction" and makes a<BR/>convincing argument that the most common use of in virtro<BR/>fertilization is to provide married men with predictably genetic<BR/>offspring that they wouldn't be able to have under other<BR/>circumstances. I think it is important to make it clear that these<BR/>mediated reproductive forms and their economic viability are driven by<BR/>white couples wanting to be able to circumvent adoptions<BR/>(racially/genetically unknown kids) and to be able to create "pure"<BR/>white babies that ARE transmissions of their father's genetic<BR/>material. (indeed the way that the law has related to surrogacy<BR/>cases, lesbian/unmarried women's claims for custody supports this<BR/>claim).<BR/><BR/>the queer use of this technology to make family is actually an<BR/>appropriation of a reproductive machine that is inbedded in the<BR/>reproduction of a racial myth at the deepest level. how queer is<BR/>that?<BR/><BR/>so basically the point is that maybe a queer relationship to narrative<BR/>(as I'm proposing it) is appropriative...not moreso than a normative<BR/>relationship to narrative but rather in a way that reveals the way<BR/>that the "normals" have hijacked the technology of language to<BR/>(re)produce sameness and oppression again and again.<BR/><BR/>thanks so much for the comment...i want to continue the conversation.<BR/>i wish that link wasn't broken...lexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08265539602839655150noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26617237.post-1153332006255717002006-07-19T14:00:00.000-04:002006-07-19T14:00:00.000-04:00hi alexis!i checked out your blog today...cool stu...hi alexis!<BR/><BR/>i checked out your blog today...cool stuff...and i wanted to post a<BR/>comment to your most recent musings on reproduction and<BR/>queerness...but the link is broken. and before i forget, i thought<BR/>i'd just email ya.<BR/><BR/>if i've got this right...this particular project takes the directive<BR/>from queer black feminism to renegotiate/disrupt the terms upon which<BR/>"reproduction" is conceptualized...as something antiqueer or<BR/>heteronormative...as something that queer folks of color, particular<BR/>women, seemingly need in their understandings of change, growth,<BR/>generatoin... and to provide a working model for how reproduction does<BR/>not necessarily reproduce the status quo or the maintenance of<BR/>property and lineage, you've employed the copy machine or photocopier<BR/>to allow you to think reproduction alongside/apart from these other<BR/>models.<BR/><BR/>if that's right...my question is have you thought about your<BR/>investment in the machine itself? so what is your inclination to<BR/>disrupt this framework with technology? and a technology that is<BR/>branded in a particular way (xerox)....this seems very different than<BR/>the initial directive from lorde, etc. so moving reproduction out of<BR/>or off of the body or out of or off the earth (property) to the little<BR/>glass screen...with the lid and the light and the power source. what<BR/>could that offer you in thinking the connection between queerness and<BR/>reproduction...particulary when at the level of bodies queerness and<BR/>reproduction are oft thought to need some form of technomediation<BR/>("what do you mean you [two women] are having a baby? don't think i'm<BR/>going to become grandfather to this biological impossibility" to quote<BR/>ossie davis's character on the l word)...the implants, the surrogates,<BR/>the turkey baster, the sperm held between our legs to keep it warm,<BR/>the adoptions, the legality of same sex adoptions (or should i say the<BR/>unlegality)<BR/><BR/>love to hear your thoughts!<BR/><BR/>student advisor<BR/>(alisha)lexhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08265539602839655150noreply@blogger.com