Microchimerism in the Mother(land): Blurring the Borders of Body and Nation

Abstract

This article traces the ubiquitous geopolitical metaphors used by researchers in the field of pregnancy-related microchimerism. In this research domain, immunologists and medical geneticists locate ‘non-self’ cells in women by marking Y chromosomes in cells derived from their sons. In the course of this research trajectory, experiments have yielded a number of surprises, beginning with the very presence of these cells in women decades after pregnancy. This finding confounded the expectations predicted by classical immunology, which posits the destruction of such ‘foreign’ entities. Once they were known to be present, fetal cells were implicated in pathological and destructive activity. In a series of reorientations in which metaphor, theory and practice are entangled with matter, the characterization of these cells has shifted from invaders to insurgent foreigners to assimilated productive immigrants. The article reflects on this rich domain of material-semiotic practice to demonstrate that the case of fetomaternal cell trafficking contributes to a growing uneasiness with dominant ontologies of bodies as bounded, defended, pure collectives of homogeneous inhabitants.

Gestating bodies: sensing foetal movement in first‐time pregnancy

“…In so doing, it nuances representations of bodily experiences of pregnancy within existing literature by highlighting the ambiguity of these sensations, and showing their inextricability from social and temporal contexts. The research complements recent work emphasising the fluidity of the relationship(s) between gestating and foetal bodies (Hird, 2007;Martin, 2010), with implications for sociological explorations of pregnancy, and discussions of bodies more widely in social scientific literature.…”

Epigenetics and Obesity

“…Food is not just fuel. It becomes mutually constitutive of the nature and functioning of organs and systems through biological 'being-ineach-other' (Martin, 2010a(Martin, , 2010b. In this context biology is constantly changing, and comprises of molecules that are in relation to one another, 'within long chains or nets of causality across time and space that reach in and through the body' (Landecker, 2011: 179).…”

“…Dichotomous positioning in obesity fields is no longer tenable, resting on what Fox-Keller (2010) calls a mirage, a space that has been constructed on a number of problematic assumptions. Theorising on bodies from the intersections of science and technology studies (Latour, 2004;Landecker, 2011;Martin, 2010aMartin, , 2010bPickersgill et al, 2013), social anthropology's attention to relationality (Ingold and Palsson, 2013) and local and customary biologies (Gaines, 1992;Lock, 1993Lock, , 2013Niewohner, 2011), relations between body, habit and affect (Blackman, 2013), developments in critical neuroscience (Fitzgerald and Callard, 2015;Pickersgill, 2013) and feminist materialist philosophy (Alaimo and Hekman, 2008;Grosz, 2004) critiques the separate worlds of biology and culture, and argues that it is impossible to reduce the lives of individuals that involve human relationships to either.…”

The challenges of new biopsychosocialities: hearing voices, trauma, epigenetics and mediated perception

“…These questions have been located within discussions of biological processes, which challenge strict borders and boundaries between the self and other. This includes the phenomena of microchimerism (see Martin, ), transplant medicine and immunology (see Shildrick, ; ), the microbiome (Landecker, ), obesity (Warin et al ., ), pandemics such as MRSA and influenza (Davis et al ., ), as well as more phenomenological reflections on the complex psychic incorporations, which mark the lived experience of organ transplantation and prostheses.…”