Substances, Knowledge, Gaze. The Bio-aesthetics of Reproductive Technology in a Sicilian Fertility Clinic

The article is based on an ethnographic investigation and inter- views to patients and medical personnel of a private fertility clinic in Sicily. An element that emerges as a peculiar characteristic in this specific context is the importance given by the prospective parents to the possibility of “see- ing” and following visually the reproductive process, where the aesthetic di- mension is central. It is through a complex network of translations within the practices surrounding reproductive techniques (where professionals com- ments and indications, medical practices, patients interpretations and visions are intertwined) that image/objects of reproduction (embryo and gametes) are made, becoming the focus of considerable emotional and corporeal in- vestment. Knowing and watching reproduction through “bio-aesthetics” means getting the chance to manage and to produce contested possible spaces of agency, making up new different and unexpected comments and in- terpretations in the supposedly unquestionable domain of kinship and nature.