In this thesis I would like to focus on a phenomenon specific to the healthcare system of modern Russia: the so-called “punitive gynecology”. Punitive gynecology can be defined as a set of healthcare-related attitudes and practices that tend to take complete control over the woman’s body, sexuality and reproductive system. The main research questions would be the following: 1) In which ways does Russian punitive gynecology aim to produce “docile female bodies” in a Foucauldian sense? 2) How does the public healthcare system appropriate the traditional Orthodox values in order to craft the perfect docile body that is merely a vessel for reproduction? 3) In which ways does punitive gynecology restructure the body? Does the body merely become a surface for the inscription of dominant ideologies or does it seek to obtain “convenient” agency?
- assigned by the advisor