Foucault's Futures: A Critique of Reproductive Reason

276 Pages·2017·2.279 MB·English

by  Penelope Deutscher

FOUCAULT’S FUTURES
A CRITIQUE OF REPRODUCTIVE REASON
PENELOPE DEUTSCHER
FOUCAULT’S FUTURES
CRITICAL LIFE STUDIES
CRITICAL LIFE STUDIES
Jami Weinstein, Claire Colebrook, and Myra J. Hird, Series Editors
Th e core concept of critical life studies strikes at the heart of the dilemma that
contemporary critical theory has been circling around: namely, the negotiation
of the human, its residues, a priori confi gurations, the persistence of humanism in
structures of thought, and the fi gure of life as a constitutive focus for ethical, politi-
cal, ontological, and epistemological questions. Despite attempts to move quickly
through humanism (and organicism) to more adequate theoretical concepts, such
haste has impeded the analysis of how the humanist concept life itself is preconfi g-
ured or immanent to the supposedly new conceptual leap. Th e Critical Life Studies
series thus aims to destabilize critical theory’s central fi gure life—no longer should
we rely upon it as the horizon of all constitutive meaning, but instead begin with life
as the problematic of critical theory and its reconceptualization as the condition of
possibility for thought. By reframing the notion of life critically—outside the orbit
and primacy of the human and subversive to its organic forms—the series aims to
foster a more expansive, less parochial engagement with critical theory.
Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, Th rough Vegetal Being:
Two Philosophical Perspectives (2016)
Jami Weinstein and Claire Colebrook, editors, Posthumous Life:
Th eorizing Beyond the Posthuman (2017)
FOUCAULT’S FUTURES
A C R I T IQU E O F
R E P R O DU C T I V E R E A S O N
PENELOPE DEUTSCHER
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Deutscher, Penelope, 1966– author.
Title: Foucault’s futures: a critique of reproductive reason / Penelope Deutscher.
Description: New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. | Series: Critical life
studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016038588 | ISBN 9780231176408 (cloth: alk. paper) | ISBN
9780231176415 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231544559 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Feminist ethics. | Human reproduction—Philosophy. |
Sex—Philosophy. | Foucault, Michel, 1926–1984—Infl uence.
Classifi cation: LCC BJ1395.D48 2017 | DDC 176/.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038588

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design: Lisa Hamm
Cover image: Grete Stern, Dream No. 30, c. 1951. Copyright © Estate of
Horacio Coppola, Buenos Aires.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
List of Abbreviations xi
INTRODUCTION
1
1 SUSPENSIONS OF SEX:
FOUCAULT AND DERRIDA
13
2 REPRODUCTIVE FUTURISM, LEE EDELMAN,
AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
40
3 FOUCAULT’S CHILDREN: REREADING
THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY, VOLUME 1
64
VI(cid:3)CONTENTS
4 IMMUNITY, BARE LIFE, AND THE THANATOPOLITICS
OF REPRODUCTION: FOUCAULT, ESPOSITO, AGAMBEN
105
5 JUDITH BUTLER, PRECARIOUS LIFE, AND
REPRODUCTION: FROM SOCIAL ONTOLOGY
TO ONTOLOGICAL TACT
144
Notes 191
Index 251
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his project began at the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kultur-
forschung, Berlin, with a research fellowship from the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation and was completed during a senior
fellowship awarded by the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kultur-
wissenschaft en in Vienna. I am particularly grateful to Judith Butler, Sou-
leymane Bachir Diagne, Susan James, Elizabeth Wilson, and Ewa Ziarek
for their indefatigably cheerful support of the fellowship applications to-
ward this book. Th ese opportunities also opened up through valuable help
along the way from Moira Gatens, Elizabeth Grosz, Genevieve Lloyd, Paul
Patton, and Quentin Skinner. An important role has been played by the
commitment of colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at Northwest-
ern University and in the Dean’s Offi ce of the Weinberg College of Arts and
Science to a fl exible and grant-friendly environment conducive to research.
Th e book has greatly benefi ted from colleagues who took time to com-
ment on early versions of manuscript chapters. My warmest appreciation
for these stimulating and memorable conversations to Laura Bieger,
Astrid Deuber-Mankowksy, Lee Edelman, Estelle Ferrarese, Samir
Haddad, Martin Hägglund, Lynne Huff er, Colin Koopman, Christoph
Menke, Catherine Mills, Andrew Parker, Francesca Raimondi, Eva von
Redecker, Linnell Secomb, Robert Trumbull, and Elizabeth Wilson.
Th e project has been enriched as well by discussions with graduate
students participating in seminars on Foucault, queer temporalities,
VIII(cid:3)ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
biopolitics, and necropolitics I have off ered at Northwestern; at the
Gender, Culture, and Society Doctoral Programme at the University of
Helsinki; and at the Department of Gender Studies and the Institut für
Medienwissenschaft at Ruhr Universität, Bochum, and particularly the
Queer Temporality and Media Aesthetics Workshop convened at the lat-
ter. I am grateful to Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky for supporting both a
Marie-Jahoda Visiting Chair in International Gender Studies and a Visiting
International Professorship at Bochum. Th is collaboration and the oppor-
tunity to work with her innovative graduate students have taught me much
about the intersections of gender and sexuality studies and media studies.
A great many colleagues also helped me to acclimatize to new aca-
demic environments, generously sharing expertise and friendship during
times of transition in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. My very warm thanks
to Laura Bieger, Christine Blättler, Hartmut Böhme, Barbara Cassin,
Monique David-Ménard, Estelle Ferrarese, Eva Horn, Rahel Jaeggi, Helmut
Lethen, Susanne Lettow, Erik Porath, Christoph Menke, Francesca Rai-
mondi, Juliane Rebentisch, Eva von Redecker, Marlene Rutzendorfer,
Miloš Vec, and Ulrike Vedder; to the wonderful staff at the IFK and the
ZfL; and to senior and junior fellows at both institutions whose fellow-
ship extended to sharing music, German, and late-night shift s.
A nourishing and distinctive research environment has also been of-
fered by colleagues at Northwestern involved in developing its Critical
Th eory Cluster. I’m particularly grateful for the trust, wisdom, and prac-
tical support of Mark Alznauer, Peter Fenves, Cristina Lafont, Rachel
Zuckert, and Sam Weber and for the initiatives, advice, ideas, style, and
vigor further contributed by Jorge Coronado, Nick Davis, Ryan Dohoney,
Dilip Gaonkar, Bonnie Honig, Anna Parkinson, Alessia Ricciardi, and
the cluster’s extraordinary graduate students.
I have learned much from the research, tenacity, and independence of
spirit of Joanne Faulker, Jack Reynolds, Samir Haddad, Catherine Mills,
Wolfh art Totschnig, Eric Jonas, Debbie Goldgaber, Anna Terwiel, and
David Johnson, valued colleagues whose futures I look forward to.
On a personal note, Pip’s encouragement has been a fundamental force
of life. Some of the book was written in the best company in the world—
with Alex, Stella, Zach, Tim, and Pip. Michael’s solidarity has traversed
more than I could have calculated. Dating to Australian days, I am glad
to have shared academia and change for almost as long with Alison, Eliz,
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS(cid:3)IX
Sam, Clare, with Linnell and Diana, with Ross and Lisabeth; and, dating
to French days, with Paola, Olivia, and Tricia. And, enfolded in the book’s
end are some gift s, treasures, and late surprises: Palm Springs; the Eos
with my father; Eliz’s always best advice; moments of good counsel from
my mother; Estelle and Anna’s capacity for glamour and a good plan;
Apichatpong Weerasethakul in Vienna; and the souffl és, car cakes, and
boundless aff ection of Alessia and Chris. I have been especially fortunate
in the combined forces and impact of Monique, Judith, and Astrid. Not
least of Monique’s many introductions has been to Astrid, only one of
whose many introductions has been to G oogle Baby . And no Côte-Rôtie
could be adequate to Judith’s hospitality—encompassing the ICCTP and
Monique’s kind of blue—nor to the assistance, over many years, of all
three.
Sections of chapter 3 were fi rst published as “Foucault’s History of
Sexuality Volume I: Re-reading Its Reproduction,” Th eory, Culture and
Society 29 (2012): 119–37. Early versions of short sections in chapter 4 and 5
appeared in “Th e Inversion of Exceptionality: Foucault, Agamben and
‘Reproductive Rights,’” South Atlantic Quarterly 107, no. 1 (2007): 55–70; in
“Sacred Fecundity: Agamben, Sexual Diff erence, and Reproductive Life,”
Telos 161 (Winter 2012): 51–78 (special issue: Politics Aft er Metaphysics); in
“Reproductive Politics, Biopolitics and Auto-Immunity: From Foucault
to Esposito,” J ournal of Bioethical Inquiry 7, no. 2 (2010): 217–26 (special
issue: Continental Approaches to Bioethics); and in “Th e Precarious,
the Immune, and the Th anatopolitical: Butler, Esposito, and Agamben
on Reproductive Biooplitics,” in A gainst Life, ed. A. Hunt and S. Young-
blood (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2016), 119–42. A
French translation of a section of chapter 5 was published in “Reproduc-
tion précaire,” L es Cahiers du genre 58 (2015): 41–68. A diff erent version of
some arguments in chapter 1 can be found in “ ‘Th is Death Which Is Not
One’: Reproductive Biopolitics and the Woman as Exception in Th e Death
Penalty, Volume 1 ” in Foucault/Derrida Fift y Years Later: Th e Futures of
Deconstruction, Genealogy, and Politics , coedited with Sam Haddad and
Olivia Custer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
Tristan Bradshaw’s work on the fi nal stages of the book’s production
was invaluable. At Columbia University Press my very warm thanks to
Wendy Lochner, Christine Dunbar, and Susan Pensak.