ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the overlapping logics of attrition in reproductive futures in contemporary South Africa. It explores reproductive potentiality in assisted conception in South Africa since 2014 via participant observation with embryologists, physicians, and patients in IVF clinics. The chapter explores the circulation of epigenetic knowledges—a broad field that focuses on understanding genetic and environmental interactions and their implications for health—in the Global South. Of particular interest in early fieldwork has been the concerns over fetal exposure to endocrine disruptors, which includes the insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) due to malaria vector control in northern Limpopo province. These two contexts are linked through the legacy of 350 years of colonialism and later apartheid: the creation of elite, urban, and formerly white spaces and of so-called “reserves” where DDT spraying takes place. The chapter points to underlying logics that connect superfluous lives as sacrificial lives, spaces of sacrifice as entangled with toxic barriers, and present sacrifices for differing techno-futures.
