A two-day interdisciplinary symposium at Birkbeck, University of London supported by Birkbeck School of Arts and MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics)
Confirmed speakers include:
Dr Lisa Baraitser, Senior Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck: Time and Again: Repetition, maternity and the non-reproductive
Dr Nina Power, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Roehampton University: Anti-, Non-, Post-Reproduction
Birkbeck is hosting a two-day interdisciplinary symposium on the culture and politics of non-reproduction. Cultural anxieties about procreation often pivot around the notion of the non-reproductive body, in which intersecting fears about class, race, sexuality, gender and disability are encoded. Recent work in cultural studies – notably Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive – has emphasised the radical potential of the subject that refuses to reproduce.
The symposium will interrogate this rhetorical opposition between the reproductive and the non-reproductive. Is the subversive potential of non-reproduction undermined by right-wing strategies such as forced sterilisation, ‘population bomb’ rhetoric, discriminatory welfare policies and the stigmatisation of single parents? What are the implications of ‘non-reproduction’ and anti-futurity for approaches to the archive and the preservation of cultural and social documents?
Thursday 31st January, Room B34, Birkbeck Malet Street Building
Friday 1st February, Room B35, Birkbeck Malet Street Building
9.30-17.00 with a wine reception on Thursday evening at 43 Gordon Square to coincide with the launch of Studies in the Maternal 4 (2) Special Issue: ‘Austerity Parenting’.
The symposium is free, but space is limited. To book a place, please email non.reproduction@gmail.com
