VAMP Connections: Michal Nahman Presents

VAMP Connections is a new series of occasional talks by guest speakers. Each talk relates to one or more of the VAMP research strands, with plenty time for discussion.

For the first talk, we were delighted to welcome Michal Nahman, Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at UWE, based in the College of Health Science and Society. Michal's talk was titled, Genocidal Hauntings of Israeli Pronatalism, and was associated with the VAMP Cultures of Care research strand.

Abstract:

The Israeli State is haunted by genocide since its inception. Whether we think of early claims to repopulate the Jewish Nation with imaginaries of replanting in a new/old place, or the reproductive violence of the Israeli state towards Palestinian women and to different degrees towards Jewish women from SWANA heritage (South West Asia and North Africa) or the policies and practices of pronatalism in the forms of IVF and other technologies of reproduction. This talk will take as its starting point the contemporary reprocide in Gaza, whilst drawing on these previous examples to argue that genocide is a  haunting of pronatalismin both previous and ongoing reproductive injustices in in this context. 

The suggested preparatory reading for this event was: Hannah Black, Colony Junior: An inconclusive attempt at a theory of maternal fear, reflecting the impasses of love in a time of genocide.