State of the //ART// of the State A Political Economy of Assisted Reproduction in Palestine/Israel Sigrid Vertommen Dissertation submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Political and Social Sciences, option Political Sciences. Middle East and North Africa Research Group - Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Ghent University March 2017 Supervisor: Prof. dr. Sami Zemni Cover design by Aïlien Reyns TABLE OF CONTENTS Summary ................................................................................................................................................................................ v Samenvatting ..................................................................................................................................................................... vi List of Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................................................... vii List of Figures .................................................................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................................................... xi Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 1 State of the ART ............................................................................................................................................................. 1 ART in Israeli Academia .................................................................................................................................................. 4 ART in Feminist Techno-Science and Science and Technology Studies .................................................... 8 ART of the State: Research Questions and Operationalisation ................................................................ 13 Structure ........................................................................................................................................................................ 16 Theoretical Diffractions .............................................................................................................................. 25 Reproducing Zionism ................................................................................................................................................ 26 Zionism and Population: Manufacturing a Jewish State .................................................................................. 29 The Intimacies of Settler Demographies ................................................................................................................ 35 Discursive-Material Entanglements of Zionism .................................................................................................. 38 Political Economy of ART: Reproductive Bioeconomies ........................................................................... 41 Biocapital, Biovalue and the Bioeconomy .............................................................................................................. 42 Reproductive Labour and the Social Reproduction of Biocapitalism ........................................................ 47 ART between Biopolitics and Necropolitics .................................................................................................... 55 Biopower and the Government of Life and Vitalty in the 21st Century .................................................... 55 Contemporary Necropolitics ....................................................................................................................................... 57 Race and the (Settler) Coloniality of Biopower ................................................................................................... 59 Eugenics, Gender and Reproduction ........................................................................................................................ 62 The Biopolitical State ...................................................................................................................................................... 64 Wrapping It Up ............................................................................................................................................................ 65 Methodological Trip Along Exodus ......................................................................................................... 71 Between Writing and Reifying .............................................................................................................................. 72 Time-Space-Scale-Terminology ............................................................................................................................ 74 i State of the //ART// of the State Practices of Data Collection and Fieldwork ..................................................................................................... 78 Fieldwork Periods and “Home Bittersweet Home” in Haifa .......................................................................... 79 Fieldwork Techniques .................................................................................................................................................... 81 Feminist Objectivity ........................................................................................................................................................ 84 Making New Things With What You Are Given ................................................................................................... 85 Ethics and Politics 2.0 ..................................................................................................................................................... 89 A Political Anthropology of Victims versus Perpetrators ............................................................................... 91 The IRB Model on Informed Consent and Deception: Jekyll and Hyde in Haifa .................................... 92 The Critical Model: Militant anthropology, PACBI and Machiavelli ............................................................ 97 Fieldwork is a Verb .......................................................................................................................................................... 99 Chapter 1 “Unsettling Israel’s Reproductive-Demographic Nexus”: A case of Stratified (Assisted) Reproduction ...........................................................................................................................103 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 103 Reproductive Dualities of Settler Abundance and Native Erasure ..................................................... 105 Vital Statistics: The Battle of Numbers and Cradles ....................................................................................... 105 The Necropolitics of Birth in the Settler Colony .............................................................................................. 108 Stratified Assisted Reproduction Among Palestinian and Jewish Israelis ............................................ 112 The Meaning of Life of Palestinian Prisoners: “Every sperm is sacred” ................................................ 117 From Gaza Stripping to the Biological Will: Militarised Repro-Scapes during Operation Protective Edge ............................................................................................................................................................. 125 Transcending Reproductive Dichotomies: Contested Mizrahi Fertility ........................................... 130 Child Removals as Biopolitical Technology of Demographic Elimination: A Cross-Settler Colonial Analysis from Australia and Palestine/Israel.................................................................................................... 132 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................. 144 Images .......................................................................................................................................................................... 145 Chapter 2 “From the Womb to the Lab and the Market”: Multiple Ontologies and Political Economies of Egg Cell Donations in Palestine/Israel .....................................................................149 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................... 149 The Genesis of the Egg Donation Law ............................................................................................................. 151 Supply and Demand of Oocytes ............................................................................................................................... 151 Shame and Scandal on the Israeli Egg Market .................................................................................................. 153 From National Shortage to Biological Surplus of Oocytes ..........................................................................