Refiguring childhood: Hannah Arendt, natality, and prefigurative biopolitics

Abstract

Arendt s concept of natality spans birth and action, which combine to inaugurate the new. Natality is used here to examine prefigurative forms of biopolitics, both past and present. These are 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.