ABSTRACT
The above quotation was taken from the political debates over Norway’s latest amendments to the Act on Biotechnology (Bioteknologiloven 2003), and demonstrates the fear and sense of risk attached to ARTs as well as a belief in Norway as a country that stands out in its willingness to govern. The quote contains several words that refer directly to the human body: uterus, biological mother and biological father. But it also mentions “the legal father,” a phrase that refers directly to the Act. The national public debates on the definition of parenthood frequently refer to bodily material, as well as to social institutions such as the Act, or more fuzzy social entities, such as custom and tradition. The concept of biopolitics refers to the complex ways in which human life and relations between humans, or in relation to human tissue, are regulated, either legally or by means of other normative tools (Foucault [1976] 1998; Rose 2001; Foucault [2004] 2009; Lemke 2011). The purpose of this article is to analyze some of the elements and paradoxes that make up Norwegian biopolitics. In 2003, Norway enacted what, in the media, was labeled “The world’s strictest act on biotechnology,” and, at the same time, a White Paper on the Family (St.meld. nr. 29 2002-2003) was presented that was supportive of family values in general, and the traditional heterosexual family in particular. Nevertheless, only five years later, Norway was one of the first countries in the world to enact a gender-neutral Marriage Act (Lov 2008-12-19, nr 112), which meant that, as married couples, lesbian couples also had access to assisted reproduction according to the Act on Biotechnology (Bioteknologiloven 2003). How could this movement happen so fast, indeed, historically, almost simultaneously? If one follows the ideological lines of party politics, the obvious answer is that there was a change of government in 2005,
when the Conservative government, led by the Christian Democrats, was replaced by a Socialist government, led by the Labor Party. However, this chapter seeks to explore a different route, one that hopefully sheds light on the way in which processes of social change are infiltrated by unruly concepts and unruly technologies. By applying Donna Haraway’s concept of the trickster (Haraway 1992), I seek to tell a more complex story, one that speaks to unruly technologies as well as unruly concepts. The mythological figure of the trickster is an inspiring tool for analyzing biopolitics. It creates space to include actors of different sorts: technologies, language and humans can all be ascribed trickster qualities or act like tricksters. This further implies that the trickster works simultaneously as a methodological and analytical tool. The argument is composed of textual analyses of the parliamentary debates on the Act on Biotechnology (Bioteknologiloven 2003), the White Paper on the Family (St.meld. nr. 29 2002-2003) and the Marriage Act (Lov 2008-12-19, nr 112), as well as a qualitative interview with a same-sex couple who have become parents to twins, but whose parenthood is simultaneously both included and excluded by the Norwegian state.
