Based on ethnography undertaken in a neonatal intensive care unit, I reflect upon the relationship between body, substance, subjectivity and person. My intention is to demonstrate the medical staff 's unconscious calculation of "substancialization" of the baby. This is the idea that from, based upon a baby's weight, it can be recognized as a person endowed with subjectivity. Before this attribution of social existence, the premature newborn infant is seen as the mother's subjectivity-less appendix. I aim reflect here upon the formation of the body as a prerequisite for the formation of personhood. I compare my ethnographic data with theoretical approaches that indicate a process of systematic anticipation of the attribution of personhood, which have been made possible by advances in reproductive technologies.
Person; Individual; Substance; Embryo; Premature newborn infant; Neonatal ICU