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Bio-Reproductive Futurism: Bare Life and the Pregnant Refugee in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men

2011; Duke University Press; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/01642472-1299965

1527-1951

Heather Latimer,

Spanish Culture and Identity

Research Article| September 01 2011 Bio-Reproductive Futurism: Bare Life and the Pregnant Refugee in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men Heather Latimer Heather Latimer Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Social Text (2011) 29 (3 (108)): 51–72. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-1299965 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Heather Latimer; Bio-Reproductive Futurism: Bare Life and the Pregnant Refugee in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men. Social Text 1 September 2011; 29 (3 (108)): 51–72. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-1299965 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsSocial Text Search Advanced Search This article discusses Giorgio Agamben's work on "bare life," or life with no political meaning. It argues that there is a critical absence in Agamben's work when it comes to women and gender, and it examines how the reproductive body complicates his concept of bare life and its corresponding figure, homo sacer, or sacred man. It does so through a discussion of Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 film Children of Men, looking at how the film's story line—an infertile world in which one refugee, Kee, is found to be pregnant—links pregnancy to political systems that regulate who gets counted as worthy of state protection. Agamben argues that it is possible to be physically alive but politically abandoned, and this is clearly the position Kee occupies as a refugee or "illegal" immigrant in the film. However, she gains political agency through the protection already afforded her fetus. Therefore, the film also shows us how it is possible to be politically protected but not yet physically alive through its focus on the status of the unborn child. Kee's body becomes the battleground for these two opposing forces as the film offers a critique of the politics of migration at the same time as it fetishizes the future child. The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2011 Duke University Press2011 You do not currently have access to this content.