This project began at the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin, with a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and was completed during a senior fellowship awarded by the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna. I am particularly grateful to Judith Butler, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Susan James, Elizabeth Wilson, and Ewa Ziarek for their indefatigably cheerful support of the fellowship applications toward this book. These opportunities also opened up through valuable help along the way from Moira Gatens, Elizabeth Grosz, Genevieve Lloyd, Paul Patton, and Quentin Skinner. An important role has been played by the commitment of colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at Northwestern University and in the Dean’s Office of the Weinberg College of Arts and Science to a flexible and grant-friendly environment conducive to research.
The book has greatly benefited from colleagues who took time to comment on early versions of manuscript chapters. My warmest appreciation for these stimulating and memorable conversations to Laura Bieger, Astrid Deuber-Mankowksy, Lee Edelman, Estelle Ferrarese, Samir Haddad, Martin Hägglund, Lynne Huffer, Colin Koopman, Christoph Menke, Catherine Mills, Andrew Parker, Francesca Raimondi, Eva von Redecker, Linnell Secomb, Robert Trumbull, and Elizabeth Wilson.
The project has been enriched as well by discussions with graduate students participating in seminars on Foucault, queer temporalities, biopolitics, and necropolitics I have offered at Northwestern; at the Gender, Culture, and Society Doctoral Programme at the University of Helsinki; and at the Department of Gender Studies and the Institut für Medienwissenschaft at Ruhr Universität, Bochum, and particularly the Queer Temporality and Media Aesthetics Workshop convened at the latter. I am grateful to Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky for supporting both a Marie-Jahoda Visiting Chair in International Gender Studies and a Visiting International Professorship at Bochum. This collaboration and the opportunity to work with her innovative graduate students have taught me much about the intersections of gender and sexuality studies and media studies.
A great many colleagues also helped me to acclimatize to new academic environments, generously sharing expertise and friendship during times of transition in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. My very warm thanks to Laura Bieger, Christine Blättler, Hartmut Böhme, Barbara Cassin, Monique David-Ménard, Estelle Ferrarese, Eva Horn, Rahel Jaeggi, Helmut Lethen, Susanne Lettow, Erik Porath, Christoph Menke, Francesca Raimondi, Juliane Rebentisch, Eva von Redecker, Marlene Rutzendorfer, Miloš Vec, and Ulrike Vedder; to the wonderful staff at the IFK and the ZfL; and to senior and junior fellows at both institutions whose fellowship extended to sharing music, German, and late-night shifts.
A nourishing and distinctive research environment has also been offered by colleagues at Northwestern involved in developing its Critical Theory Cluster. I’m particularly grateful for the trust, wisdom, and practical support of Mark Alznauer, Peter Fenves, Cristina Lafont, Rachel Zuckert, and Sam Weber and for the initiatives, advice, ideas, style, and vigor further contributed by Jorge Coronado, Nick Davis, Ryan Dohoney, Dilip Gaonkar, Bonnie Honig, Anna Parkinson, Alessia Ricciardi, and the cluster’s extraordinary graduate students.
I have learned much from the research, tenacity, and independence of spirit of Joanne Faulker, Jack Reynolds, Samir Haddad, Catherine Mills, Wolfhart Totschnig, Eric Jonas, Debbie Goldgaber, Anna Terwiel, and David Johnson, valued colleagues whose futures I look forward to.
On a personal note, Pip’s encouragement has been a fundamental force of life. Some of the book was written in the best company in the world—with Alex, Stella, Zach, Tim, and Pip. Michael’s solidarity has traversed more than I could have calculated. Dating to Australian days, I am glad to have shared academia and change for almost as long with Alison, Eliz, Sam, Clare, with Linnell and Diana, with Ross and Lisabeth; and, dating to French days, with Paola, Olivia, and Tricia. And, enfolded in the book’s end are some gifts, treasures, and late surprises: Palm Springs; the Eos with my father; Eliz’s always best advice; moments of good counsel from my mother; Estelle and Anna’s capacity for glamour and a good plan; Apichatpong Weerasethakul in Vienna; and the soufflés, car cakes, and boundless affection of Alessia and Chris. I have been especially fortunate in the combined forces and impact of Monique, Judith, and Astrid. Not least of Monique’s many introductions has been to Astrid, only one of whose many introductions has been to Google Baby. And no Côte-Rôtie could be adequate to Judith’s hospitality—encompassing the ICCTP and Monique’s kind of blue—nor to the assistance, over many years, of all three.
Sections of chapter 3 were first published as “Foucault’s History of Sexuality Volume I: Re-reading Its Reproduction,” Theory, Culture and Society 29 (2012): 119–37. Early versions of short sections in chapter 4 and 5 appeared in “The Inversion of Exceptionality: Foucault, Agamben and ‘Reproductive Rights,’” South Atlantic Quarterly 107, no. 1 (2007): 55–70; in “Sacred Fecundity: Agamben, Sexual Difference, and Reproductive Life,” Telos 161 (Winter 2012): 51–78 (special issue: Politics After Metaphysics); in “Reproductive Politics, Biopolitics and Auto-Immunity: From Foucault to Esposito,” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 7, no. 2 (2010): 217–26 (special issue: Continental Approaches to Bioethics); and in “The Precarious, the Immune, and the Thanatopolitical: Butler, Esposito, and Agamben on Reproductive Biooplitics,” in Against Life, ed. A. Hunt and S. Youngblood (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2016), 119–42. A French translation of a section of chapter 5 was published in “Reproduction précaire,” Les Cahiers du genre 58 (2015): 41–68. A different version of some arguments in chapter 1 can be found in “ ‘This Death Which Is Not One’: Reproductive Biopolitics and the Woman as Exception in The Death Penalty, Volume 1” in Foucault/Derrida Fifty Years Later: The Futures of Deconstruction, Genealogy, and Politics, coedited with Sam Haddad and Olivia Custer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
Tristan Bradshaw’s work on the final stages of the book’s production was invaluable. At Columbia University Press my very warm thanks to Wendy Lochner, Christine Dunbar, and Susan Pensak.