Publication

Assisted reproduction in Cuba: traces of a racial biopolitics

Ileinis, Yarlenis, Mestre Malfrán, Ana Paula, Garcia Boscatti, Pablo Pérez Navarro, and Yanelvis Mateo Arañó. Revista Estudos Feministas 32(2): 1–14. , 2024

In vitro fertilization by ovule donation is one of the reproductive technologies used in Cuba. Although reproductive biotechnologies offer possibilities to confront the symbolic order that assumes race as a central element of the kinship intelligibility matrix, in the case of ovule donation, the efforts of the Cuban State are focused on the surveillance of phenotypic marks as a condition for the exchange of reproductive material between ovules donors and receivers. The analysis that we have developed seeks to characterize this racial biopolitics of kinship, its racist presuppositions, which delimit an area of reproductive abjection due to the phenotypic mixtures involved, and the possibilities open to its subversion. The critical dimension that we propose seeks to contribute to anti-racist debates in current cuban society.

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