How are marketing strategies of genetic material used as a mechanism for biopolitical governmentality?

Ya’arit Bokek-Cohen

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

19 Scopus citations

Abstract

The article critically examines the marketing strategy employed by Israeli sperm banks as sites for biopolitical governmentality of sperm consumers. The dataset comprise multiple sources which converge to provide evidence for the transfusion of militaristic Zionist ideology into sperm. The biopolitics of sperm marketing involves the naturalization of militaristic Zionism as a dogmatic basis for a “dividing practice” for the inclusion and exclusion of particular types of personified gametes in the symbolically constructed collective gene pool. The image of the military man is the idealized type of hegemonic masculinity in the Israeli nation-in-arms. The warrior-donor is both the supplier of the product and the core product itself, and his semen constitutes the materialistic carrier of his spiritual essence. Using Foucault's notion of biopolitical governmentality suggests why militaristic Zionism discourse has such potency in sperm marketing, and raises questions about contemporary “technologies of the self” as consumerist practices.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)534-554
Number of pages21
JournalConsumption Markets and Culture
Volume19
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Nov 2016

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

  • Governmentality
  • ideology
  • masculinity
  • militarism
  • panopticon
  • politicized marketing
  • sperm

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