Look Who’s Talking, Indeed: Fetal Images in Recent North American Visual Culture

Abstract

Fetal preoccupation is the latest form of the age-long male utopian urge to control reproduction and to control the body, perhaps to the extent of eliminating it altogether. In the group of commercial images one find the fetus as cosmic entity, made possible through an interaction between a new fetal interpellation, and developing medical and photographic technologies. The set of images evidences, arguably, an unconscious association between the fetus/womb and the idea of a safe haven. The fetus is incorporated as part of man's ongoing dream to make the perfect being that will deliver humankind from seemingly insuperable global dilemmas, a dream that includes eliminating woman's role in reproduction. North American capitalism, in its search for new markets and its uncanny method of co-opting subversive discourses, has transformed many of the sixties oppositional positions into dominant ones; blurring distinctions and boundaries, and eliminating the sense of an 'outside' distinct from the dominant culture.

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