Limits of “Labor”: Accounting for Affect and the Biological in Transnational Surrogacy and Service Work

Abstract

Affective and biological labor such as that found in call center and surrogacy work are indices of new forms of exploitation and accumulation within neoliberal globalization, but they also rearticulate a longer historical colonial division of labor. In this essay, feminist materialist scholarship provides the grounds to continue to scrutinize which kinds of exchange and subjectivity can even be represented by categories of labor. Leading to the question of what stakes are involved in asserting that gestational surrogates and others whose productivity occurs primarily through biological and affective processes are subjects of capitalist labor power. This essay argues that tracking vital energy, rather than value, as the content of what is produced and transmitted between biological and affective producers and their consumers holds on to the human vitality that Karl Marx describes as the content of value carried by the commodity and absolute use value of labor power to capitalist production, while also describing the content of these value-producing activities as greater than what can be described in terms of physical commodities and their value as represented through exchange.

White vulnerability and the politics of reproduction in Top of the Lake: China Girl

“…Going beyond liberal frameworks centred on women's individual autonomy and choice, this approach to ARTs and surrogacy extends the conversation to include the reproductive rights, social justice concerns, and human rights of women outside hegemonic feminism (Mohapatra, 2012). Taking India as an emblematic example, Twine -speaking of a 'fertility caste system' -and Vora argue that contemporary practices of transnational surrogacy extract and transfer value from poor, lower castes to wealthy nationals, foreigners and privileged upper castes (Banerjee, 2014;Twine, 2016;Vora, 2012). Reproductive rights and reproductive justice are conflicting perspectives, as 'the reproductive privileges of some women depended on the reproductive disciplining of other women in ways that did not challenge racism or other vehicles of inequality' (Ross and Solinger, 2017: 65).…”

Pregnant Metaphors and Surrogate Meanings: Bringing the Ethnography of Pregnancy and Surrogacy into Conversation in Israel and Beyond

“…Vora () discusses surrogacy as a new form of “biological and affective labor,” comparing it to another form of outsourced service work in the Indian labor market, namely, call center work. What these types of work have in common, Vora suggests, is the “labor of producing and transferring human vital energy directly to a consumer” (p. 682).…”

“…The dominant theoretical orientation of both Jacobsen's U.S. study as well as the Indian studies is the framing of surrogacy as work; a common argument is that surrogacy can be understood as paid "biological labor" as well as "emotional work." Vora (2012) discusses surrogacy as a new form of "biological and affective labor," comparing it to another form of outsourced service work in the Indian labor market, namely, call center work. What these types of work have in common, Vora suggests, is the "labor of producing and transferring human vital energy directly to a consumer" (p. 682).…”

Fertility Control: Reproductive Desires, Kin Work, and Women's Status in Contemporary India

“…I discuss the efforts of young married women in Lucknow to cultivate strong kin ties in their extended families while working toward an appearance of appropriate reproduction through the use of biomedical infertility services. I engage the emerging literature on a recent trend in India for women to attempt to secure their families’ future by diverting their reproductive potential to the procreation of foreign and domestic intending parents through gamete “donation” and surrogacy (Deomampo ; Majumdar ; Pande ; Twine ; Vora ).…”