ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the emergent forms of bio-sociality' to which these metrics give rise by investigating how, and in what ways, they are informed by what Hacking calls the genetic imperative' the need to categorise our lives according to genetic inferences about human traits. The emergence of artificial insemination in the seventeenth century and the later refinement of the science of cryogenics together enabled gametes to be mobilised in historically unprecedented ways. With their liberation from the body came new opportunities for them to be circulated and marketed within reproductive economies that are now globally expansive. Artificial insemination (AI) the introduction of semen into the vagina or cervix of a female by any means other than sexual intercourse is not, in any sense, a new practice. As Clara Pinto-Correia notes in her fascinating account of this work it is important to draw careful distinctions between the kinds of techniques Spallanzani was employing in such experiments.
