Universality reborn: Hannah Arendt’s natality in feminist ethics

Argirò, A., (2024) “Between Private and Public: Rethinking Hannah Arendt’s Notion of ‘Natality’ Through Contemporary Feminist Thought”, Studies in the Maternal 14(1), 2024

This article re-examines Hannah Arendt's notion of 'natality' through a reinterpretation of her public-private distinction as dynamic, and engaging specifically with feminist reflections on 'the maternal' as provided by Adriana Cavarero and Judith Butler. As the human capacity of beginning something new, Arendt's concept of 'natality' implies that human beings come into the world not as self-generated, but as related to others. Nonetheless, this notion has been criticized for abstracting from the concrete experience and generative process of birth. More generally, it has often been argued that Arendt separates human beings' first appearance in the world through birth from their capacity to appear in the shared scene of political life. Building on feminist reflections on maternity and suggesting an interpretation of Arendt's public/ private distinction as dynamic, this article shows that the private sphere exhibits its plurality and embodiment through intimate relations that inform the political space. This way, it argues that the interplay between what Arendt calls 'first and second birth' can be rethought as non-exclusive but connected, reconsidering the 'first birth' as a political and existentially significant event already staged within a network of relations.

Hypatia Reviews Online, 2019

She has written several books of philosophy and creative writing; the latest, Free Stuff: Freedom and Commodity in the Internet Age, is forthcoming from Lexington Books. Quote: "Scholarly and visionary, Arendt, Natality and Biopolitics constitutes a wholly inspiring intervention into the ongoing questions of biopolitics and feminist theory." *** This excellent monograph presents a striking new reading of Hannah Arendt's concept of natality, arguing that through the concept, a prescient Arendt provides a convincing account of biopolitics ahead of successors Foucault, Nancy, and Agamben. Comparative discussions of these theorists, who are often more familiar citations in the discussion of biopolitics, bring clarity to the differences among them, and to previous readings of Arendt.

Osborne Peter (Ed.), Futurethoughts. Critical Histories of Philosophy no. 6, London, CRMEP books, 2024

CRMEP Books is the imprint of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University London. It currently publishes two series of open access electronic publications derived from research events organized by the Centre, which are also available in short-run paperback editions.

Continental Philosophy Review, 2010

Much in the same way that Nietzsche's sociohistorical context motivated his concern with articulating a life-affirming response to the problem of nihilism, so Hannah Arendt, writing in the wake of the destruction wrought by World War II and the atrocities of the Holocaust, sought ways of making sense of and affirming life within a post-totalitarian world. Again, as is the case with Nietzsche following the death of God, Arendt's task was complicated by the fact that, as she argues, unprecedented events had rendered modern political, legal, and moral concepts, categories, and principles not only useless but also potentially harmful. Prominent among such concepts is that of ''the human'' which, according to Arendt, presents a special case. Rather than destroying this concept from without, totalitarianism instead revealed and pushed to the breaking point its existing inherent contradictions. Arendt makes clear that rather than promoting the dignity of all persons, notions of a given humanness as expressed in the Rights of Man in fact played a key role in undermining it: totalitarian regimes had only to show that certain groups of people were not fully human (or not properly human at all), and were therefore unworthy of such rights and the protections they afforded. Given that human rights were effectively grounded in a fiction, they completely broke down when states attempted to put them into practice. The question therefore emerges not only as to how, but more fundamentally whether, the protections ''human rights'' are intended to afford can be secured and implemented in any kind of meaningful way in a post-totalitarian world. And even if they can be, does it make sense to refer to them as ''human rights''? If not, how can they be conceptualized in ways that mediate against both oppression and domination and also promote human freedom? These are some of the key issues and questions that Peg Birmingham takes up in her book, Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility. Birmingham rejects claims that, on the one hand, Arendt's notion of a basic ''right to have rights'' ultimately fails because it lacks adequate normative foundations and that, on the other hand, Arendt in fact jettisoned the notion of human rights altogether-or, at least, that she ought to have done so. Instead, Birmingham argues that Arendt took it upon herself to reconceptualize the right to have rights in ways that rendered such a notion politically efficacious in a world devoid of a notion of universal, given humanness. Indeed, according to Birmingham, ''Arendt's entire work can be read as an attempt to work out theoretically this fundamental right to have rights'' (1). Birmingham ultimately sees Arendt articulating what might be referred to as ''human rights without the Human.'' 1 From her perspective, insofar as the concept of the human cannot provide a basis for the right to have rights, Arendt dispenses with it in favor of a notion of a common, shared humanity. Moreover, her notion of humanity is not grounded in reason or autonomy, as is the case with the modern concept of the human-or even in ''nature, history, or god''-but rather in the ''archaic and unpredictable event of natality'' (3). Birmingham's own analysis, then, is dedicated to elucidating Arendt's notions of natality and humanity and considering how the latter might function as an ontological basis for common responsibility and the right to have rights. Her first chapter provides an overview of natality as Arendt conceives of it; Chapters Two and Three focus, respectively, on