The Womb of a Lesser Woman: Indian Anglophone Fiction and the Politics of Biotechnological Othering

Abstract

Our paper investigates the fictional representations of ‘biotechnological othering’ and biological precarity as experienced by underprivileged Indian women with particular emphasis on the commodification of their wombs. Foregrounding the exploitation of their reproductive rights via surrogacy at the hands of the glocal capitalist elite, we rout our argument through the representational practices of The House of Hidden Mothers by Meera Syal and Origins of Love by Kishwar Desai to explore the disavowal of the reproductive rights of socio-economically vulnerable Indian women and the re-perpetuation of capitalist modes of inferiorization that target them. Contesting the egalitarian tilt of posthuman discourses, our main contention is that the biotechnological commodification of the wombs of indigent women does not merely confine them within structural inequalities, it also ensures that they remain confined within a biological precarity. Taking theoretical support from pertinent voices in the field including Deepika Bahri, Laura Harrison, Anureet Lotay, Katerina Kolarova and Eva-Sabine Zehelein, we unpick the multi-dimensional ramifications of biotechnological othering depicted in these novels to foreground the threat of biological precarity embedded within transnational surrogacy and the continuation of the dehumanization of Women of Colour in today’s world.