No More Chilrden
Part of Anti-University Week, 12 June, 2018. With Provocations by Marcia Farquhar, Owen Parry, Mary Paterson and Giulia Palladini.
I have been feeling more and more restricted lately by other people's desires, other people's believes and frameworks. I've been feeling lots of pressure that has to do with the language I use to express myself, a language which comes from a heteronormative, patriarchal discourse. I don't mind children, really. But what I mind is a logic of compulsive, reproductive futurity, which seems to permeate everything and control my life, even when I walk along the pavement.
My stance is this: The problem is not that people are having babies. The problem is that having babies creates a logic that refuses to be superseded – a logic that compels us to consider ourselves in relation (and only in relation) to it; it compels us to define ourselves in relation to it and to make decisions around our lives alongside it. The logic that having babies gives rise to, shapes who we are; this logic sets the terms of the discussion, which impose an ideological limit to other life narratives and which render unthinkable anything beyond it. What would it mean not to fight for children, but to fight for oneself? How could one take the other side or to abolish sides all together? And do we need to answer the question: if not this, then what? Do we have to make sense only in relation to a future defined by children? Blame the narcissists that do not want to have children! Blame the hedonists that do not want to have children! Blame the selfish, for not wanting to have children! But if this is what narcissism is, then I want to be narcissistic, I want to be hedonistic, I want to be selfish.
My stance is this: The problem is not that people are having babies. The problem is that having babies creates a logic that refuses to be superseded – a logic that compels us to consider ourselves in relation (and only in relation) to it; it compels us to define ourselves in relation to it and to make decisions around our lives alongside it. The logic that having babies gives rise to, shapes who we are; this logic sets the terms of the discussion, which impose an ideological limit to other life narratives and which render unthinkable anything beyond it. What would it mean not to fight for children, but to fight for oneself? How could one take the other side or to abolish sides all together? And do we need to answer the question: if not this, then what? Do we have to make sense only in relation to a future defined by children? Blame the narcissists that do not want to have children! Blame the hedonists that do not want to have children! Blame the selfish, for not wanting to have children! But if this is what narcissism is, then I want to be narcissistic, I want to be hedonistic, I want to be selfish.
Always the question, if not this, then what?
Can I say what are we pushing for?
What are you pushing for?
Children invoke teleology – they invoke a narrative of teleological determination
We make sense only in relation to a future – but who’s future is that? Is it our children’s future? OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE? THERE ARE NO CHILDREN! THERE ARE NO CHILDREN TO SHOUT FOR, SHOUT FOR YOUR SELF – SHOUT FOR YOURSELF
WITHOUT THE FUTURE WE ARE DEAD – THE CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE, SO WITHOUT THE CHILDREN WE ARE DEAD
Blame the narcissists that do not want to have children!
Blame the hedonists that do not want to have children!
Blame the selfish, for not wanting to have children!
But if this is what narcissism is, then I want to be narcissistic, I want to be hedonistic, I want to be selfish.
Down PRONATALISM
DOWN PRONATALISM
DOWN PRONATALISM
EVERYONE TOGETHER
DOWN PRONATALISM
WE WANT ACROBATICS, WE WANT SEX ACROBATICS, WE DO NOT WANT PROCREATIVE SEX, JUST ACROBATICS