Refiguring childhood: Hannah Arendt, natality and prefigurative biopolitics

Abstract

Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality spans birth and action, which combine to inaugurate the new. Natality is used here to examine childhood as a prefigurative form of biopolitics. This concerns practices that seek to actualise envisioned futures by conditioning and constraining natality, thereby shaping the power relations that encapsulate the social and cultural world(s) of adults and children. The article concludes by reflecting on whether this corralling of natality might be subverted with a view to refiguring childhood.