| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores the local infrastructures enabling transnational commercial surrogacy in Russia, which I term ‘Russian surrogacy’. I approach ‘Russian surrogacy’ from multiple perspectives. These perspectives draw from biopolitics, new materialism, post/decolonial postsocialist writings, a relational understanding of place, and queer theory. The heterogeneity of approaches reflects the many ways ‘Russian surrogacy’ could be represented. In its complexity and ongoingness ‘Russian surrogacy’ resists essentialistic descriptions of what it is. Instead, it invites a reassessment of theoretical coordinates and conceptual tools specifically with respect to non-representational character and material performativity of its online articulations as well as relationality of place. In effect of this conceptual exploration, ‘Russian surrogacy’ is reworked as material-semiotic, always positioned/contextualised/enacted, in need of spatialisation, and conceptually and geographically leaky/unstable.
The main questions this thesis asks are: What does ‘Russian surrogacy’ look like and, more importantly, what does a specific representation of ‘Russian surrogacy’ amount to? In what ways does a conceptual exploration of ‘Russian surrogacy’ contribute to existing research on transnational surrogacy?
The thesis comprises four articles, each distinct in their theoretical and analytical approaches.
The article ‘Ideology of Simulation: The material-semiotic production of the surrogate in the web worldings of Russian surrogacy’ investigates ‘Russian surrogacy’ as produced with/through the various material-semiotic meaning-making systems articulated on the websites of Russia-based surrogacy providers. Drawing inspiration from Haraway’s philosophy, I conceptualise the websites as worldings that come about as a result of national legislation on ARTs, local biotechnological practices and the rhetoric of agencies and clinics. The analysis indicates that simulation is the main principle guiding the production of ‘the surrogate’, in a way that sustains her dehumanisation.
Inspired by Baradian philosophy ‘Structuring surrogacy through choice: Approaching the websites of Russia-based surrogacy providers with agential realism’ analyses websites of agencies catering to foreign clients as enactments of commercial transnational surrogacy in/to Russia. The analysis shows that, on the agency websites, surrogacy, as a commodity, is saturated by choice. Surrogacy is compartmentalised and reified, comprising a neat unit for consumption. While these possibilities for choice-making might appear positive from the perspective of potential clients, they infringe on the surrogate’s ability to respond. In fact, the analysis demonstrates that the very expertise of the agency is construed around price-differentiated degrees of restraining the surrogate’s responsibility. In this way, choice becomes a technique of colonisation.
The paper ‘Trajectories of “Russian surrogacy”’ is theoretically building on Doreen Massey’s reconceptualisation of space (and place) as relational, as well as post-/decolonial postsocialist writing. Empirically, it is based on media coverage of surrogacy-related criminal cases, as well as public events devoted to surrogacy, publicly available documents and the websites of surrogacy providers. I suggest that relational understanding of place is a fruitful theoretical framework for studying what is going on under the label of ‘Russian surrogacy’. I conclude that, when spatialised, ‘Russian surrogacy’ leaks both conceptually and geographically.
The paper titled ‘Russian surrogacy and the moral panics around “single men”’ draws inspiration from Rahul Rao's concept of ‘homocapitalism’. It investigates the effects of de facto gay-inclusive surrogacy offers in a state-induced homophobic context. It shows how Russia-based agencies and clinics offering surrogacy to ‘single men’ and LGBTQ individuals denounce their proclaimed gay-friendliness once their commercial interests are endangered. Empirically, the article builds on the marketing materials of Russia-based surrogacy providers as well as a selection of legal documents.
The representation of ‘Russian surrogacy’ depends on the specific optics employed, with respect to both positionality and the conceptual apparatus. Shifting theoretical frameworks and the questions posed enables a perspective. Accordingly, ‘Russian surrogacy’ becomes an opportunity to see, rendering visible the contradictions and discrepancies inherent in the biopolitical project of the state, as well as the violence that this enacts. It also presents an instance of violence performed by the neoliberal market to a classed and racialised female subject who is moulded into the surrogate in a material-semiotic fashion, and whose human status and entitlements are gradually stripped away. This conceptual work prompts a critical reflection on a relative invisibility of ‘Russian surrogacy’ in the ‘Westernised’ and ‘national’ circuits of knowledge production, and also on the epistemic and institutional positionality of the current research, itself. | en_US |
