"A Meditation on Adoption, Constructed Bodies, and Comparison": A Written Interview for Adoption & Culture

ABSTRACT:In this essay, I perform comparisons and meditate on comparison itself. Referring to kinship that is nontraditional—created by means other than intercourse—the essay compares adoption with the construction of bodies, and Adoption Studies with Constructed Body Studies. Comparison to vaguely imagined "nature" often plays a key role in notions of adoption and constructed bodies: often an adoptive family is imagined to be like a "natural" one, and a constructed body is imagined to be like a "natural" one. Irony, itself built on comparison, is the dominant trope in narratives of the constructed body, and I suggest it may well flourish in adoption narratives as well. After tracing the power of the ironic "uncanny valley" in both types of narrative, the essay turns to "Like Daughter," Tananarive Due's poignant story of cloning and informal adoption, as a concrete example in which to trace similarity and difference. On a more abstract level, I examine how adoption and the construction of bodies can both be interpreted as metaphor and translation, themselves based on comparison. Using comparison as a lens for reading adoption, Adoption Studies, the construction of bodies, and Constructed Body Studies, I aim to generate ideas about how they can nurture each other.