sh.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-harvard.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-oxford.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Natality or Birth?: Arendt and Cavarero on the Human Condition of Being Born
Depaul University, USA; Siena College, USA.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5996-5064
2018 (English)In: Hypatia, ISSN 0887-5367, E-ISSN 1527-2001, Vol. 33, no 2, p. 273-288Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This essay offers a critical analysis of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality through the lens of Adriana Cavarero's feminist philosophy of birth. First, I argue that the strength of Arendtian natality is its rootedness in an ontology of uniqueness, and a commitment to human plurality and relationality. Next, I trace with Cavarero three critical concerns regarding Arendtian natality, namely that it is curiously abstract; problematically disembodied and sexually neutral; and dependent on a model of vulnerability that assumes equality rather than asymmetry. This last issue is further developed in the final section of the essay, where I examine the idea that birth, for Cavarero, becomes the very concept by which we can distinguish and normatively differentiate acts of care and love from acts of wounding and violence. Upholding the normative distinction here depends on a conceptual distinction between vulnerability and helplessness. To maintain the ethical potential of the scene of birth, I argue that we have to insist on the very characteristics Cavarero attributes to itones, as this essay aims to show, that are ultimately missing in the Arendtian account thereof.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cambridge University Press, 2018. Vol. 33, no 2, p. 273-288
National Category
Philosophy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-53875DOI: 10.1111/hypa.12403ISI: 000431646900007Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85042524395OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-53875DiVA, id: diva2:1853380
Available from: 2024-04-22 Created: 2024-04-22 Last updated: 2024-04-22Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Söderbäck, Fanny

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Söderbäck, Fanny
In the same journal
Hypatia
Philosophy

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 51 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-harvard.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-oxford.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf