Arendt, Natality, and Indigenous Reproductive Justice

Abstract

Abstract In their recent book, Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics, Rosalyn Diprose and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek reconstruct Hannah Arendt's concept of natality in order to diagnose and resist biopolitical threats to democratic plurality. Their analysis leads them to engage indigenous reproductive justice organizing; that engagement is the focus of my critique. I argue that their understanding of the biopolitical targeting of indigenous people needs further development. Diprose and Ziarek tend to read indigenous organizers as working toward inclusion in the democratic plurality of settler societies. While that is the aim of some indigenous organizations and actors, that is not the aim of many, including a theorist and activist they engage, Katsi Cook (Mohawk). I suggest that their engagement with indigenous reproductive justice organizing is shaped by the important, but unthematized role settler colonialism has in Arendt's work. I further argue that Cook provides crucial theoretical and practical challenges to the settler state and its role in feminist theoretical projects of critique.