Infertility: Tracing the History of a Transformative Term

Robin E. Jensen

Published by Penn State University Press 2016

Infertility

Tracing the History of a Transformative Term

Robin E. Jensen

Volume 3 in the series RSA Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetoric

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271078212

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book explores the arguments, appeals, and narratives that have defined the meaning of infertility in the modern history of the United States and Europe.

Throughout the last century, the inability of women to conceive children has been explained by discrepant views: that women are individually culpable for their own reproductive health problems, or that they require the intervention of medical experts to correct abnormalities. Using doctor-patient correspondence, oral histories, and contemporaneous popular and scientific news coverage, Robin Jensen parses the often thin rhetorical divide between moralization and medicalization, revealing how dominating explanations for infertility have emerged from seemingly competing narratives. Her longitudinal account illustrates the ways in which old arguments and appeals do not disappear in the light of new information, but instead reemerge at subsequent, often seemingly disconnected moments to combine and contend with new assertions.

Tracing the transformation of language surrounding infertility from “barrenness” to “(in)fertility,” this rhetorical analysis both explicates how language was and is used to establish the concept of infertility and shows the implications these rhetorical constructions continue to have for individuals and the societies in which they live.

Author / Editor information

Jensen Robin E. :

Robin E. Jensen is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Utah and the author of Dirty Words: The Rhetoric of Public Sex Education in the United States, 1870–1924 (2010).

Reviews

“In Infertility, Robin Jensen examines how discourses of infertility change over time, deftly revealing how these discourses do not follow a linear progression but instead shift, overlap, disappear, and re-emerge. Scholars of the rhetoric of science and medicine, medical and health humanities, and science and technology studies will marvel at her insightful, fine-tuned analysis, which beautifully illustrates how medicalized discourses continue to moralize, positioning infertile women as degenerate, noncompliant, or untimely despite ever greater technological and medical advances.”
—Jordynn Jack, author of Autism and Gender: From Refrigerator Mothers to Computer Geeks

“Robin Jensen asks, What is human infertility? How do we understand that ‘involuntary childlessness’ known at different times, and within different ‘rhetorical ecologies,’ as ‘barrenness’ and ‘sterility’? She constructs her answer by weaving a rhetorical-historical account that is informed and engaging, layered and complex: no linear narrative here. The book is a shining example of what critical rhetoricians do, and how and why we do it.”
—Judy Segal, author of Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine

“Robin Jensen’s thoughtful and engaging study interrogates a complicated matrix of cultural narratives, medical epistemologies, and gender normativities in order to scrutinize the evolution and constitution of infertility. Her investigation of infertility’s medicalization, shaped by metaphors that simultaneously percolate and lurk at particular historical moments, is compelling in its execution and impressive in its scope. Jensen’s sweeping archive and innovative thesis resist narrative simplicity, offering a valuable contribution to the field of rhetorical studies.”
—Jeff Bennett, author of Banning Queer Blood: Rhetorics of Citizenship, Contagion, and Resistance

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 From Barren to Sterile: The Evolution of a Mixed Metaphor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
2 Vital Forces Conserved: Narrating Energy Conservation and Human Reproduction at the Turn of the Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
3 Improving upon Nature: The Rise of Reproductive Endocrinology and Chemical Theories of Fertility Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
4 Psychogenic Infertility: The Unconscious Defense Against Motherhood Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
5 Fertility in Clinical Time: The Integration of Scientific Specialties as Infertility Studies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 240
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 6
- Images: 6
- Other: 6 illustrations
Keywords: infertility; Jenson; ”inability to conceive”; ”reproductive health problems”; history; motherhood; IVF

eBook

Published: September 29, 2016
ISBN: 9780271078212