Remembering deceased kin through assisted conception in India

Majumdar, Anindita (2021) Remembering deceased kin through assisted conception in India. Contemporary South Asia. pp. 1-13. ISSN 0958-4935

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Abstract

In this paper, I examine the idea of fiction in relation to kinship by analyzing the role that memory plays in assisted reproduction in North India. I specifically engage with the desire to seek the intervention of in-vitro fertilization after the loss of a child, mostly sons, through an accident, prematurely. In the process, the paper engages with the kind of narratives that birthing women remember and speak of in seeking the ‘rebirth’ of their dead sons, and what this means for kinship per se. This is especially important in relation to the conflicts and ambivalence that mark intimate relationships; and the ways in which the IVF clinic and clinician seek to reimagine them in facilitating assisted conception. I suggest that the narratives surrounding these rebirths act as effective and powerful messages for normalizing IVF, and also to hide other forms of relatedness that come to mark conflicting, ambivalent and yet, deeply intimate relationships.

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IITH Creators:
IITH CreatorsORCiD
Majumdar, AninditaUNSPECIFIED
Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: ART, Infertility, IVF, memory, South Asia
Subjects: Social sciences
Arts > Liberal arts
Divisions: Department of Liberal Arts
Depositing User: . LibTrainee 2021
Date Deposited: 12 Mar 2021 06:38
Last Modified: 12 Mar 2021 06:38
URI: http://raiith.iith.ac.in/id/eprint/7667
Publisher URL: http://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2021.1884662
OA policy: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/5111
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