Brilliant! So good to read a gc critique using a Foucauldian perspective.
I found governmentality very applicable for understanding the myriad forces of power exerting on women's "choices" about using prenatal diagnosis technologies to "self" govern their bodies--the clinical discourse couched in liberal individualism and "nondirective genetic counselling" that seeks to remove professional responsibility from eugenic outcomes; the state that uses eugenic aims of reducing the cost to the state of caring for children/people with Down syndrome, etc; the technologies that promise "diagnosis" in the ability to detect and count chromosomes but little prognosis of the extent of disability; and capitalist models of production shaping scientific facts about advancing maternal age causing poor quality control in the production of eggs in women's bodies. Each woman is left with the huge ethical burden to decide on her own, with scant professional advice that could direct her to talk with other women who have made this decision nor with women who have had children who have given birth to children with genetic anomalies (for which there are many "support groups" whose members support the health professionals and would likely be willing to help pregnant women- but, no, health professionals portray them as too biased).
Your gc analysis of the trans controversy could go further perhaps in understanding the shifting power among health professionals--the surgeons and endocrinologists, for example, using TRA power to claw back power from the psy sciences, whose professional power has been in ascendency as a means for convincing people to regulate themselves and who TRA depict as evil conversion therapists. There's also more that could be done with the role of law and state organisations (eg antidiscrimination legislation) as well as international governing organisations (eg the UN) that TRA have targeted effectively in promoting transgender rights discourse.
Brilliant! So good to read a gc critique using a Foucauldian perspective.
I found governmentality very applicable for understanding the myriad forces of power exerting on women's "choices" about using prenatal diagnosis technologies to "self" govern their bodies--the clinical discourse couched in liberal individualism and "nondirective genetic counselling" that seeks to remove professional responsibility from eugenic outcomes; the state that uses eugenic aims of reducing the cost to the state of caring for children/people with Down syndrome, etc; the technologies that promise "diagnosis" in the ability to detect and count chromosomes but little prognosis of the extent of disability; and capitalist models of production shaping scientific facts about advancing maternal age causing poor quality control in the production of eggs in women's bodies. Each woman is left with the huge ethical burden to decide on her own, with scant professional advice that could direct her to talk with other women who have made this decision nor with women who have had children who have given birth to children with genetic anomalies (for which there are many "support groups" whose members support the health professionals and would likely be willing to help pregnant women- but, no, health professionals portray them as too biased).
Your gc analysis of the trans controversy could go further perhaps in understanding the shifting power among health professionals--the surgeons and endocrinologists, for example, using TRA power to claw back power from the psy sciences, whose professional power has been in ascendency as a means for convincing people to regulate themselves and who TRA depict as evil conversion therapists. There's also more that could be done with the role of law and state organisations (eg antidiscrimination legislation) as well as international governing organisations (eg the UN) that TRA have targeted effectively in promoting transgender rights discourse.