Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic observations of Reproductive Biology courses and reflecting on concepts of bio-objects/bio-subjects and their relation to agency, this paper studies the discursive-material entanglements through which biologists learn what oocytes are-can, and what is to be expected from them

Paper long abstract:

Bio-objects have been defined through their capacity to challenge boundaries (Vermeulen, Tamminen and Webster 2012). I use this theoretical framework around bio-objects to think instead about how some bio-actants might be entangled in preserving certain boundaries. How do agency recognitions work in the tension between change and stability? Through a focus on oocytes, key actors within Spanish bioeconomies of reproduction, I analyze how particular hierarchical world orderings are entangled in views around biological matter. Drawing on ethnographic work in graduate and undergraduate courses of biology -where future reproductive workers learn about reproduction- I analyzed the frames of intelligibility through which reproduction is learned, showing how these processes collude with broader capitalist and heteronormative imaginaries. Directing Butler's insights on precariousness towards the cell level, I argue that reproduction is explained as a phenomenon that happens through unequal agency distributions, in which some entities, mainly sperm, act as (sovereign) subjects while others, eggs among them, are seen as relational/frontier-like entities. This scheme is reinforced through what I call technologies of simplification, to be found both within courses and clinics, allowing only certain entities to be recognized, presented, and acted upon as bio-subjects. Understanding materiality through a theoretical dialogue between perspectives around care (Puig dela Bellacasa 2011, Pérez Orozco 2006, 2014) and speech/performativity (Butler 1997, 2009) we aim at showing that what eggs are within these contexts is part of complex discursive-material entanglements in which coproduction between biological matter, biomedical technologies and socio-political nets of hierarchical ordering of the world become tangible.