Edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova

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Conflicting Humanities, edited by Rosi Braidotti and Paul Gilroy General Ecology, edited by Erich Hori with James Burton POST HUMAN GLOSSARY

Edited by Rosi Braidottiand Maria Hlavajova

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To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.comand sign up for our newsletters. PILL, THE 314 (POSTHUMAN ICDNI 315 sexual partner (Gordon 2007; Kline 2010; bodies into institutionalize body, the foetus, in immunological terms. d praetices of Oudshoorn 1994). both li eration and co trol The placenta splits the subject fromwithin, � . � (Warren 1994). The isolation and synthesis of female Followmg Foucaults b10-pol in a non-dialectical process of internal itical analysis sex hormones that led to the development of the management of reprod differentiationsthat predicates the primacy uction and of the contraceptive pill also prepared the sexuali in the 980s (F of the 'other within'.Yet, this highly signi t:>' � . �ucault 2003, 2010), ground for modern reproductive tech the radical fem1mst ficant configuration has remained unrep claim of liberation Via nologies such as in vitro fertilization. technology resented within phallo-logocentric logic. was disputed. Throughout the Moreover, by opening the possibility of 1990s feminist Therefore, I suggest moving placenta studies of science and tech politics centre stage, but into a different motherhood to single and lesbian women nology pointed out the dangers as well as the theoretical direction. Firstly, placenta polit {Rich 1995), the Pill paved the way for the advantages of working within bio-politicaI ics upholds an affirmativeand non-aggress rejection of compulsory heterosexuality systems of hormonal, bio-chemical and ive bio-politics that opposes the military through the promotion of alternative genetic management of bodies in a social terminology and concepts that are custom kinship systems outside the patriarchal order based on disciplining and punishing constraints of the nuclear family. (Oudshoorn 1994; McNeil and Franklin ary in scientific discussions of immunology. The radical sting of the Pill is that, by 1991; Haraway [1985] 1991; Roberts 2008). The immunization process is usually formu making it possible for women to choose Queer critiques of naturalized and lated in terms of the individual and collect whether to have children or not, it facilit essentialized gender identities and norms ive bodies' struggle forhomeostatic stability ated their rejection of traditional family radicalized these critiques. On the one and protection against external aggressive structures (Diepenbrock 1998). Domestic hand Preciado {2013) emphasized the forces.Secondly, this approach to immuno lifein the patriarchal family presents clear normalizing power of the Pill that builds logy has been taken as an analogy for polit disadvantages for women by confining upon and endorses the underlying ics and governance. For instance, Esposito's them to the role of caretaking in the private hormonal and endocrinological design of work on bio-politics {2008b) explores the sphere at the cost of exclusion from the 'normal' femalebodies. In this framework, immunological political economy of hospit economic sphere. It isolates men from the the Pill is taken as a 'chemical panopticon: ality and hostility. I findit disappointing that lives of their children, and institutes a that is to say a micro-instance that reflects PLACENTA POLITICS what was originally a politics of life - bio gendered economy that segregates repro macro-power formations - such as politics - which also included a reappraisal ductive labour and family life from wage medical-legal institutions, the nation Placenta politics is a term that I coined of the politics of dying and letting die, has labour (Labora Cuboniks 2015). The Pill states and global networks of bio-genetic to indicate the materialist feminist bio become almost exclusively focused on supports a radical sexual politics for capitalization of life (Cooper 2011). On the politics of the relation between the mater thanato-politics, to use Foucault's term alternative family arrangements. This has other hand, with the privilege of hindsight, ial maternal body, the placenta and the (1977). In contemporary discussions, this not escaped the attention of organized reli it has become manifest that the hiatus foetus.I transpose this maternal-placental issue blends with necro-politics (Mbembe gions and conservative political parties, between reproduction and sexuality that foetalcon nection into a nomadic frameso 2003), that is to say extermination and which have waged an all-out war against it. was introduced by the Pill in the 1960s as to argue that it composes a generative extinction. Bio-politics should not position Up until today, the Pill is not easily avail marked not only a scientific change of assemblage. The placental assemblage life only on the horizon of death, but also as able in Catholic countries or in countries paradigm, but also a profound fracture raiseskey issues of relationality, immunity the generative force of both human and with a strong Christian fundamentalist within patriarchal family power for ma andauto- immunity, which are best served non-human organisms (Braidotti 2006b). In presence. tions and the perpetuation of compulsory by a neo-materialist philosophy of becom terms of the immunological debate this The Pill's detractors have historically heterosexuality. It was, therefore, a water ing and affirmativeethics within a monistic means that the question is not that and how offered counter-arguments to stress its shed moment forthe feminist movement. understanding of matter. I draw on the the organism is capable of self-preservation mixed blessings. In the 1970s eco-feminists In the light of this rich and complex work of French feminist biologist Helene at the expense of some of its weak or adhered to authentic notions of female history, of all the advantages and chal Rouch (1987), who was inspired by the diseased parts, but rather that in most cases nature resulting in the rejection of any lenges it represents, as well as its huge philosopher Luce Irigaray {1985a, 1985b) it actually does not attack them. And I would scientific manipulation of female bodies. impact upon the lives of millions, we andby Lacanian psychoanalysis to propose like to add that, specifically in pregnancy, This resistance evolved into the idea that wonder why the Pill is not more widely thebiolo gical entity of the placenta as a the organism does usually not expel bio-chemical contraception is politically celebrated as the icon of a posthumanist third party that redefines the relationship the foetal other, but rather hosts it and dangerous, because it inserts women's subject position that emancipates women between the maternal body and the other nurtures it.

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specificity of the maternal-placental-fetal See also Pill, the; Preg to escape social regulation, Responding to the crisis of anthropo assemblage. nant Posth orations Joy; Bios; Material of cheap labour and centric criticism, Gayatri Spivak in Death Feminisms; F m niat advantage A posthuman theory of the subject Posthumanities; e i : also a of a Discipline raised the question of what Trans-cor ate major tax breaks. It created emerges therefore as an empirical project Trans*; porealitt, negoti Feminicity. stituency that has successfully it would mean to 'imagine ourselves as that aims Jitical con at experimenting with what s to come up with an planetary subjects rather than global :eked measure contemporary, bio-technologically medi Rosi B . to global agents' (2003). For Spivak, the critical raidottf ctive international response ated bodies are capable of doing. These effe , potential of planetarity lies primarily in ing, T he rationale of globalization non-profit experiments with contempor warm offeringa mode of identification that does views the Earth as a resource to be ary subjectivity actualize the virtual hich titively exploited for maximum not defineitself in opposition to the Other, possibilities of an expanded, w mpe relational self be contrasted with the planetary and only obliquely in the ecological sense that '°rofit, can functions in a nature-culture in Bolivia's 2010 Law of of being 'custodians of our very own �eals expressed continuum and is technologically medi equal planet'. As a strategic choice of termino Mother Earth, which granted nature ated. Not surprisingly, this non-profit, Earth as logy, the notion of the planetary allows us . rightsto hu mans and defined the experimental approach to different prac between advocates 'auni que, indivisible, self-regulating com to sidestep the impasse tices of subjectivity runs against the spirit identity as an alternative unityof interrelated beings'. of a cosmopolitan of contemporary capitalism. Theperv ersity m of Tension between the ethos of the plan to ethnicity and nation-based forms of this system, and its undeniable success, collective belonging, and those in favour etaryan d the globalized mindset can also consists in re-attaching the potential for of retooling national identity as a mode of be felt in theoretical spheres. Writing experimentation with new subject forma the economic imperialism on the accelerating 'planetary crisis of resistance to tions, back to an overinflated notion of of view of climate change' in 2009, historian Dipesh of globalization. From the point possessive individualism (Macpherson Chakrabarty made the significant admis the current sense of urgency regarding the 1962}, fuelled by a quantitative range of sion that two decades of studying 'theories need fora collective response to ecological consumers' choices. This is precisely the of globalization, Marxist analysis of capital, crisis, however, Spivak's original question opposite direction from the non-profit subaltern studies, and postcolonial criti could be reformulated more assertively to experimentations with intensity, which I cism' had not prepared him for the 'planet ask what it would mean to see ourselves as defend in my theory of posthuman ary conjuncture within which humanity 'planetary agents', acting on behalf and in subjectivity. findsitself today'. In a world transfigured the name of the planet, rather than as A neo-materialist nomadic approach by ecological crisis, on the brink of mass 'global subjects', passively accepting the allows us to analyse and re-think this extinction and facing irreversible changes rules of the game of globalization. posthuman 'exploded maternal body' thor to oceans and atmosphere, critical theory While the global features both as a oughly and to situate 'feminicity' (see is also in the midst of a paradigm shift.The timeless abstraction and as a delimiter of a Feminicity) in an ethically accountable general neglect within historical critical discrete period of human history, whose framework. Theimpact of the fast-progress theory of environmental issues, symbol beginnings are traced back either several ing reproductive technologies upon the izedby Michel Foucault's infamous expres decades to the communications revolution complex maternal assemblage is best sion of his'de testation of nature' by literally or centuries to the medieval roots of world addressed within a neo-materialist nomadic turning his back on the landscape, was trade, the planetary inhabits a more exten philosophy of becoming geared to an based on the rejection of attempts to see ded temporality that both exceeds the affirmative relational ethics. The emphasis theworld as an ecological totality as irre human and has its own specifichistoricity. on monism casts a new light on explora trievably essentialist and denial of the It implicitly acknowledges the fact that tions of the shiftingboundaries between life existence of nature as anything other than during the 'deep time' reaching back and death and on the ethical and political a self-referential linguistic category. By millions of years before the advent of implications for posthuman thought. contrast, signs of an incipient planetary humanity, the Earth had its own history Placenta politics expresses not only a new turn can be recognized in materialist posi that was as eventful and unpredictable as immunological paradigm, but also the tions of Speculative Realism and object human history. Attention to the deep posthuman politics of affirmationof life as oriented ontology, as well as in the wider history of the Earth contextualizes the radical immanence. theorization of the posthuman. activities of our species, reminding us of

POSTHUMAN GLOSSAII 0STHUMAN GLOSSARY