Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics: Toward Democratic Plurality and Reproductive Justice

385 Pages·2018·1.1 MB·English

by  Rosalyn Diprose

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tracing a novel path through the work of derrida, deleuze M
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to embrace the ‘fundamental violence’ of experience – its
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leonard lawlor’s groundbreaking book draws from a career-long Wr
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ISBN 978-1-4744-1824-9 ud
NCITEMENTS ddesign.co roSalYn diProSe and
edIinburghuniversitypress.com .u
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eWa PlonoWSka Ziarek
Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics
Incitements
Series editors
Peg Birmingham, DePaul University
and Dimitris Vardoulakis, Western Sydney University
Editorial Advisory Board
Étienne Balibar, Andrew Benjamin, Jay M. Bernstein, Rosi Braidotti, Wendy
Brown, Judith Butler, Adriana Cavarero, Howard Caygill, Rebecca Comay,
Joan Copjec, Simon Critchley, Costas Douzinas, Peter Fenves, Christopher
Fynsk, Moira Gatens, Gregg Lambert, Leonard Lawlor, Genevieve Lloyd,
Catherine Malabou, James Martel, Christoph Menke, Warren Montag,
Michael Naas, Antonio Negri, Kelly Oliver, Paul Patton, Anson Rabinbach,
Gerhard Richter, Martin Saar, Miguel Vatter, Gianni Vattimo, Santiago Zabala
Available
Return Statements: The Return of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy
Gregg Lambert
The Refusal of Politics
Laurent Dubreuil, translated by Cory Browning
Plastic Sovereignties: Agamben and the Politics of Aesthetics
Arne De Boever
From Violence to Speaking Out:
Apocalypse and Expression in Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze
Leonard Lawlor
Agonistic Mourning: Political Dissidence and the Women in Black
Athena Athanasiou
Interpassivity: The Aesthetics of Delegated Enjoyment
Robert Pfaller
Derrida’s Secret: Perjury, Testimony, Oath
Charles Barbour
Resistance and Psychoanalysis: Impossible Divisions
Simon Morgan Wortham
Reclaiming Wonder: After the Sublime
Genevieve Lloyd
Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics: Toward Democratic Plurality and Reproductive Justice
Rosalyn Diprose and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek
Visit the series web page at: edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/incite
Arendt, Natality and
Biopolitics
Toward Democratic Plurality and
Reproductive Justice
Rosalyn Diprose and
Ewa Plonowska Ziarek
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
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© Rosalyn Diprose and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, 2018
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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Typeset in Bembo
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printed and bound in Great Britain.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 4433 0 (hardback)
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ISBN 978 1 4744 4434 7 (paperback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 4435 4 (epub)
The right of Rosalyn Diprose and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek to be identified as
the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights
Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
[1] Natality Reframing the Meaning of Politics 32
[2] Natality, Normalising Biopolitics and Totalitarianism 105
[3] Natality, Abortion and the Biopolitics of
Reproduction 174
[4] Natality, Ethics and Politics: Hospitality,
Corporeality, Responsibility 228
[5] Natality and Narrative 289
References 353
Index 364

Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous reviewers of Edinburgh University
Press for their thoughtful engagement with our work, Carol
Macdonald for her editorial expertise and support, and
Peg Birmingham and Dimitris Vardoulakis, the editors of
Incitements series, for their encouragement and interest in this
project. Thanks also to James Dale, Rebecca Mackenzie and
Kirsty Woods at EUP for their assistance in getting the book to
press. We appreciate the cheerful and expert assistance of Emily
Hughes in preparing the full manuscript for publication. Special
thanks to Ralph Footring for his skilful and patient approach to
the copy-editing and typesetting tasks.
We are grateful for the institutional support that allowed us
to work together in the same place for short periods. Rosalyn
Diprose visited the University at Buffalo (UB) in August–
October 2014 as a guest of the UB Humanities Institute (and
its then Director, Erik Seeman) and the Comparative Literature
Department (and its Chair, Krzysztof Ziarek) with the generous
support of the Eileen Silvers/WBFO Visiting Professorship in
the Humanities. Thank you to Eileen Silvers for her unwavering
support for the humanities, to faculty at UB who engaged with
Rosalyn’s research for their hospitality, to the administrative staff
vii
acknowledgements
who helped with that visit and to the graduate students involved
in the seminar ‘The Human Condition’ whom we co-taught –
their insights did much to stimulate our thinking on Arendt’s
political ontology. We also had three opportunities to work
together on the book in Sydney: initially for two weeks in 2013
with support from the University of New South Wales, and
then, for a week in December 2015 and another in December
2016 to integrate different drafts into a single manuscript.
These meetings occurred while Ewa Plonowska Ziarek held the
positions of Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Western Sydney
University (WSU) (December 2015) and Adjunct Professor in
the College of Fellows, WSU (2016–19). We are grateful to
those programmes and to colleagues at WSU for their support.
The book has benefited from our numerous stimulating joint
discussions about Arendt’s philosophy over the six years we were
writing the book. However, the writing and the research were
largely conducted with the two of us working independently.
Hence, we have different colleagues and friends to thank for
their support in that.
For stimulating her initial interest in Arendt’s politics of
action, Rosalyn Diprose is grateful to Sarah Sorial and Mark
Kingston, graduate students at UNSW in the mid-2000s, and
to Catherine Mills for introducing her to connections between
Arendt and Agamben’s biopolitics while co-teaching an honours
seminar at that time. Ideas from those and other collegial events
have no doubt leaked into this book via Rosalyn’s research
papers on Arendt and Foucault’s biopolitics noted in this volume,
which also benefited from the comments and/or institutional
support of Bruce Braun, Danielle Celermajer, Nigel Clarke,
Judith Still and Sarah Whatmore. Rosalyn’s research on Arendt
continues to be sustained by the wit, wisdom and friendship of
viii
acknowledgements
members the UNSW Arendt Study Group of 2013–14: Robyn
Ferrell, Joanne Faulkner, Melanie White and Simone Bignall.
Thanks also to the following valued colleagues and friends for
providing feedback on, or hosting presentations of, Rosalyn’s
research on biopolitics and phenomenology in this decade:
Marsha Rosengarten, Martin Savransky, Leonard Lawlor, James
Bono, Simone Drichel, Gay Hawkins, Ann Murphy, Niamh
Stephenson and Alex Wilkie. Rosalyn’s research would not have
progressed far over the past decade without the love and support
of Alison Ritter, to whom she gives her heartfelt thanks.
Ewa Ziarek is indebted to Vivian Liska, Idit Alphandary,
Leszek Koczanowicz, Ryszard Nycz, Roma Sendyka, Alison
Stone, Emilia Angelowa, Jana Schmidt, Roger Berkowitz, Karen
Jacobs, Laura Winkiel and Krzysztof Ziarek, for their helpful
comments and suggestions, and for providing opportunities to
present her work in progress. Thanks also to Cheryl Emerson
for her expert help in preparation of Ewa’s written drafts. Ewa
is especially grateful to Krzysztof Ziarek, as well as other family
members, for their sense of humour, patience and support along
the way.
Earlier versions of a few sections of this book have been
published previously and we are grateful for permission to use
these materials here in their substantially revised form:
• Earlier versions of sections II and III of Chapter 3 appeared in
Rosalyn Diprose and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek (2013), ‘Time
for beginners: natality, biopolitics, and political theology’,
PhiloSophia, 3(2), 107–20.
• Sections I and III of Chapter 4 borrow revised text from two
sources: Rosalyn Diprose (2009), ‘Women’s bodies between
national hospitality and domestic biopolitics’, Paragraph:
Journal of Modern Critical Theory, 32(1), 69–86; and Rosalyn
ix