Meio quilo de gente! - produção do prazer de ver e construção da pessoa fetal mediada pela ultra-sonografia: um estudo etnográfico em clínicas de imagem na cidade do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The central focus of this thesis consists of seeking to understand a phenomenon which is presently taking place in the area of fetal ultrasound images. What began as a medical imaging technology, invented for diagnostic purposes, gradually became an object of consumption and leisure . In order to investigate this phenomenon, the theoretical investigation looks at how the modern mode of seeing and the observer were constructed, and in what way technologies of medical imaging impact the social construction of the body. Another theoretical aspect consists of the investigation, from a socio-historical point of view, of the production of pregnancy and of the fetus as medical subjects, and in what way the technology of ultra-sound applied to obstetrics is situated at the nexus of various processes: the process of constructing a new mode of seeing , of the reconfigurations of the body, of the medicalization of gestation and of the fetus, and, finally, of the construction of the fetus as a person before its birth. Anthropological studies carried out abroad, during the nineties, show that the phenomenon involving fetal images was inscribed in and delimited by the specific socio-cultural codes where the imaging was done. The lack of research in this area in the Brazilian context was the point of departure for an empirical investigation. An anthropological observation of obstetric ultra-sounds, with an ethnographic approach, was carried out in three private imaging clinics, during the course of 2003, in Rio de Janeiro, with the intention of understanding how this phenomenon took place, in what way it was produced and signified by those involved, and what were the ramifications of these practices, modeled by local cultural particularities. The field work showed that obstetric ultrasonography can be characterized as an interactive imaging technique, in contrast to other medical imaging techniques, a peculiarity which lends itself to the construction of various significations having as their origin gray and hazy fetal images. The production of the pleasure of seeing the fetus is the touchstone which links the useful to the pleasing, and the consumption of images is point of connection for various questions raised in the thesis. One can think of this situation as part of a panopticism which scans female and fetal bodies, at one and the same time normatizing them and constructing new subjects shaped by virtual corporalities.