This paper engages with theories of the monstrous maternal in feminist philosophy to explore how examples of visual art practice by Susan Hiller, Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper, Tracey Emin, and Cindy Sherman disrupt maternal ideals in visual culture through differently imagined body schema. By examining instances of the pregnant body represented in relation to maternal subjectivity, disability, abortion, and “prosthetic” pregnancy, it asks whether the “monstrous” can offer different kinds of figurations of the maternal that acknowledge the agency and potential (...) power of the pregnant subject. (shrink)

This paper outlines some of the new epistemological and ontological assumptions of contemporary technoscience thereby reframing the question of an epochal break. Important aspects are the question of a new techno-rationality, but also the constitution of a ‘New World Order Inc.’, with its new ‘politics of life itself’, the reconfiguration of categories such as race, class and gender in technoscience, as well as the amalgamation of everyday life, technoscience and culture. Given the difficulties of ‘proving’ a new episteme (or even (...) epoch), I change perspective by reflecting on the epistemological vantage point from which the interpretation of technoscience as a new episteme or epoch becomes (im)plausible—confronting traditional approaches of philosophy and history of science and technology assessment (TA) with interventional approaches, such as postcolonial and feminist cultural studies of technoscience. (shrink)

Despite FDA recommendations against the practice, keepsake fetal imaging centers have become more common in the United States. U.S. ultrasound regulations construct keepsake imaging in relation to medical practice, yet these centers blur the boundary between medical and nonmedical. Analyzing keepsake imaging centers in two U.S. states demonstrates how centers both appeal to medical expertise to promote their services and extend an intensive mothering ideal to the prenatal stage. To understand keepsake ultrasound, we must account for the role of consumerism (...) in creating pregnant mothers and how keepsake centers constitute ultrasound as a means of expressing mother-love before birth. (shrink)