BIOPOWER AND REPRODUCTIVE TECHNIQUES

This article will argue that reproductive technologies were not developed to address infertility issues as they advertised, but to control the reproductive processes of woman's body and thereby control a variety of population aspects. The article is divided into six parts. The first one will present the Foucaultian notion of biopolitics, pointing to the centrality of human reproduction in it. The second part will present the historical path covered by research in the field of human reproduction and the emphasis given to the body of women as a field of experimentation. The manipulation of women's lives for biopolitical (repro- ductive) purposes will be then illustrated by national birth rate policies of a post-war periods. In the fourth part of the article, the topic of artificial insemination will be presented as a a project that had difficulty implementing it because of its imaginative (and practical) potential for women interested in forming a family without a man. In vitro fertilization will be presented, then, as an elucidative of the objectifying vision and practice of scientists in relation to women and of a project to control female reproduction. Finally, we will question the intentions of the reproductive research done in the name of th