Reproductive Technologies of the Self: Michel Foucault and Meta-Narrative-Ethics

This paper presents a direction for narrative ethics based on ethical ideas found in
the works of Michel Foucault. Narrative ethics is understood here at the meta-level
of cultural discourse to see how the moral subject is constituted by the discursive
practices that structure the contemporary debate on reproductive technologies.
At this level it becomes meta-narrative-ethics. After a theoretical discussion, this
paper uses two literary narratives representing the polarized views in the debate
to show how the moral subject may be compelled to relate to its self. Ethics is
redefined as Foucauldian rapport `a soi, and ethical analysis, at this meta-level,
shows how the moral self is intimately connected to cultural discourse.