Psychological IVF: conceptualizing emotional choreography in a fertility clinic

During ethnographic fieldwork at a fertility clinic in Denmark, I became intrigued by emotions. In particular, I found an incidence labelled ‘psychological IVF’ theoretically provocative as it challenged my views on materializations, which I was preparing to study. This paper centres on the story of psychological IVF, and I use this narrative to consider emotions and materialization methodologically. I also ask how emotions at fertility clinics can be conceptualized to enable analysis of their materialization, change, and effects. In order to do so, I develop the term ‘emotional choreography’. This theoretical work has three aims. First, it seeks to illustrate how the story of psychological IVF offers a rich range of materializations of emotions. Secondly, this work proposes a feminist materialist conceptualization of emotions that is both non-representational and posthuman. This conceptualization draws upon Thompson's notion of ontological choreography and Barad's theory of agential realism, extending these concepts to develop the notion of emotional choreography. Finally, this paper aims to contribute to current discussions regarding (new) materialisms within feminist theory, underscoring the conceptual importance of the feminist legacy.