Feminism and Finitude

: This essay examines the ideological parallels between the transhuman pursuit for immortality and xenofeminism’s call for biological manipulation. Paying particular attention to the patriarchal legacy of technoscience, I identify eugenic principles embedded in the discursive emphasis on anti-naturalism, freedom, and alienation. My intention is to recuperate xenofeminism’s more radical manoeuvres by resituating its aims through a historical materialist approach. Specifically, I suggest a reinterpretation of nature as inherently technological. In so doing, I argue for an alliance between xenofeminism and ecofeminist political economy to engage a discursive redirection toward degrowth and dealienation. I then build on Rosi Braidotti’s (2013) posthuman theory of death to suggest an uncomfortable biopolitical expansion : a biopolitics for the Anthropocene should seek not only an equal right to live but also an equal predisposition to death. My countervailing materialism centres on a politics of finitude through an analysis of the vital-fatal entanglement in the body’s reproductive capacities.


Introduction
On the cusp of a new millennium, transhumanist Ray Kurzweil published what he described as a guide to the twenty-first century. The Age of Spiritual Machines maps the terrain of philosophical questions arising from advanced computation, including the potential for a "post-biological future." 1 The argument for such a future has been propagated by transhumanism, equal parts philosophy and technoscientific practice that seek to "overcome many of the limitations of human biology." 2 Although fantasies of immortality are intrinsic to the human condition-the Fountain of Youth and Elixir of Life date back to antiquity, and major religions espouse the promise of an afterlife-transhumanism has long identified death as a problem to be solved through technological advancement. As the epigraph of this essay reveals, xenofeminism (XF) is similarly preoccupied with the means of science and technology for supposedly liberatory ends.
My intervention begins by focusing on the discursive collisions between transhumanism and xenofeminism. Both projects marshal anti-naturalism to call attention to the social conventions inscribed on the human body and, in their broad formulations, emphasise a discourse of freedom that centres on autonomy and alienation. To be sure, they are also comprised of many iterations, sometimes conflicting. For instance, prominent transhumanist Max More argues that "religion acts as an entropic force, standing against our advancement into transhumanity and our future as posthumans." 3 On the other hand, the development of Mormon transhumanism "illustrate[s] how theology and technology overlap and intertwine in the deserts of the American West." 4 The regional locus, however, is worth 1 Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines (New York: Viking, 1999), 14. 3 Max More, "Transhumanism: Towards a Futurist Philosophy," 1996, https://ildodopensiero.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/max-more-transhumanism-towards-a-futurist-philosophy.pdf. 4 Tamara Kneese and Benjamin Peters, "Mormon Mommies Will Never Die," Logic, August 3, 2019, https://logicmag.io/bodies/mormon-mommies-will-never-die/.

Feminism and Finitude
3 noting; organised religion and commercial "new age" pursuits in the sciences (e.g., biohacking and cryonics) have both benefited from Silicon Valley philanthropy. Tensions imbue the XF movement as well: some xenofeminist currents emphasise the emancipatory potential in alienation, whereas others highlight the importance of building coalitions and "being in and of [a] world" marked by crisis. 5 And, although XF brands itself as a gender abolitionist movement, its origins lie in accelerationist thinking.
Notwithstanding these ideological entanglements and contestations, the overarching principles of xenofeminism and transhumanism embrace faith in technoscientific rationalism. Both movements thus reinforce a cybernetic logic that "reconfigure[s] the body as an informational system." 6 As historical examinations of science and technology reveal, this body-as-data rhetoric is entwined with capitalism. 7 This essay begins with a deeper exploration of the ideological overlaps between transhumanism and xenofeminism. I take the work of Helen Hester, a founding member of Laboria Cuboniks and lead thinker on xenofeminism, as an entry point into challenging the presuppositions that threaten the project's more radical manoeuvres. Following this critique, I survey the potential for a dealienating means of production in ecofeminist political economy and degrowth movements. I then develop what I call a vitalfatal politics through an examination of life/death and human/nonhuman entanglements in gestation.
My investment in finitude engages what Rosi Braidotti refers to as a posthuman theory of death, one that resists the twinned dreams of capital accumulation and immortality. Transhumanism continues to propagate visions of eternal life made possible by advanced computation despite ongoing global climate and health crises. I argue that the emphasis on alienation and technological manipulation in XF risks the reappropriation of transhuman values. My formulation of a vital-fatal framework advances an uncomfortable biopolitical reframing: a feminist politics for the Anthropocene should seek not only an equal right to live but also an equal predisposition to die. Taken together, my emphasis on feminism, ecology, and finitude intends to resituate the fragility of the body as fundamental to responsible world-building. To begin with some words of clarification, there is much to be redeemed from xenofeminism, particularly in Hester's account. First, any movement that troubles the naturalisation of gender follows the feminist tradition of dismantling supposedly "given" systems and structures, although it seems that the XF manifesto is at odds with itself in this respect when it ardently declares that "xenofeminism is a rationalism." 8 Notwithstanding this tension, I find Hester's criticism of ecofeminism convincing; a feminist politics that romanticises nature should not do so at the expense of bodily sovereignty.

We Have Never Been Natural
Equally compelling is Hester's expansion of reproductive justice to include "support for having and raising children in conditions of safety." 9 And, for her part, Hester does acknowledge the limits of an accelerationist Prometheanism in envisioning radical gender politics. 10 However, where xenofeminism highlights the historical association of nature with oppression-insofar as Western colonialism has sought to master nature at every turn and subsequently construct it through the lens of normativity-my understanding of nature is inextricably tied to the technological. We see the co-shaping of biological and technological forces, particularly in the medical context: hormone therapy mobilises the body's own molecular functioning in a variety of medical uses, including trans health; insulin treatment engages biological processes necessary for sustaining life; Botox mimics the microbe that causes botulism, but more efficiently. A feminist politics should, then, acknowledge the imbrication of the biological and the technological in political transformation. In other words, it should account for an understanding of nature as an episteme in its own right. This point has been elaborated by ecofeminism, which has centred on an ecological approach to knowledge production. I will explore contemporary ecofeminist and ecosocialist debates more deeply in the following section.
My critique of anti-naturalism, which is again sympathetic to the ecofeminist orientation, locates a eugenic thread in the will to master the body. Historically, the political project of relegating the body to the order of the technological has limited the procreative freedom for persons who have been categorised as less desirable. Feminist philosophers of science and medical anthropologists have illuminated the structural inequalities embedded in the regulation of life, particularly as they manifest in reproductive technologies. Michelle Murphy reveals how the technoscientific approach to reproduction beginning in the post-war period advanced "the genocidal project of eugenics." 11 Treatments like egg freezing, IVF, and surrogacy-while they may upend historically determined dimensions of reproductive labour-are 8 Laboria Cuboniks, "Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation," accessed December 17, 2022, https:// laboriacuboniks.net/manifesto/xenofeminism-a-politics-for-alienation/.  5 not widely available. In fact, limited access to such reproductive technologies tends to reinforce racial capitalism. White, wealthy women can afford the high price of having children later in life with assisted reproduction. Meanwhile, Black mothers of all ages are "twice as likely to receive late or no prenatal care" whatsoever. 12 Sophia Roosth argues that commercial sperm banks "advance genetic essentialism," thus reinforcing a biopolitical model that privileges the white, cis-heteronormative phenotype. 13 We continue to see the eugenic regulation of life at the hands of the state in the practice of forced sterilisation on incarcerated and Indigenous women.
Returning to the problem of rationalism, to determine that nature is unjust, and to subsequently call for its manipulation-something that both xenofeminism and transhumanism enthusiastically support-is a decidedly anthropocentric gesture to the extent that it once again affirms certain "truths" associated with human nature. 14 I am thinking here of liberty as a right endowed exclusively to the human and only to some humans at that. A major pillar in the XF manifesto is the construction of freedom through more alienation. But, as any historical materialist would remind us, alienation has always benefited the aims of capital by reducing the human subject to an instrument of labour. Silvia Federici identifies in the capitalist work-relation the emergence of "the conflict between Reason and the Passions of the Body," which is to say, a contention between what is socially coded as "masculine" and what is coded as "feminine." 15 The privileging of the mind has valorised the individual male genius, in turn subjugating the supposedly passive (nonhuman, feminine) body. This sentiment is inscribed in political world-making, specifically in the construction of liberal humanism. Szymon Wróbel observes that even advocates of supposedly "Left" politics have "submitted to the temptations of individualism, consumerism, competition, privilege, and proceeded as if there were no alternatives to state that rule in the interests of markets." 16 For these reasons, I am not convinced that the XF reinterpretation of alienation can be extracted from its corollaries: privatisation, estrangement, accumulation, and whiteness. Perhaps it is for this reason that Hester abandons the tenet of alienation in her book. 14 It is worth noting that philosopher Catia Faria, by all accounts convinced by the XF argument, identifies a species bias in the movement's deficient description of what constitutes the "alien." See Catia woman's choice to end her pregnancy." 22 These positions reveal that the discourse of freedom is inherently imbued with white bourgeois privilege. Not only have we never been natural, but most of the world has never been free.
The aims of xenofeminism may stop short of achieving eternal life, but an emphasis on alienation (from nature, and by extension, from the body) reaffirms liberal humanist values embedded in technoscience.
The movement's accelerationist lineage further problematises the emancipatory interpretation of alienation; as a theory invested in legitimizing white supremacy, it is difficult to "strip accelerationism for parts." 23 Sophie Lewis remarks that in an age of increasing xenophobia, the xeno-prefix should give us pause: whose bodies are served by more alienation? If the teleology of transhumanism and XF 7 is at best limited to abstraction and, at worst, based on individual freedom, even the most progressive agenda will fail to scale to planetary survival. Gender abolitionism must be accompanied by collective practices of care attuned to the precarious planetary condition.
The following section revisits Marx's concept of the means of production to sketch the contemporary ecofeminist developments invested in degrowth and dealienation. As a political strategy, ecofeminist political economy argues for "the much-needed decrease in social metabolism." 24 How might we reimagine ecofeminism in ways that avoid the glorification of nature and, at the same time, steer xenofeminism in a direction that attends to the ecological crisis? What possibilities emerge from a framework of slowness rather than techno-fetishism and alienation? I suggest a move toward a feminist biocommunism to take charge of this era of planetary precarity.

Dealienating the Means of (Re)production
Marxist theory has long held the belief that capital functions through a regime of acceleration and growth. 25 Brian Massumi interprets the "future-looking" condition of capital as a time-function that revolves around potential. 26 Potential is intrinsic to the concept of exploitation insofar as capital operates by gambling on the successful extraction of human labour power. Under the conditions of capital, the human being is a source of potential, and one that must always be maximised to create a continuous, accelerating circuit of social metabolism. Capital's insatiable appetite for growth hinges on living labour, which is to say, labour that is predisposed to mortality. It can then be said that an economy of speculation underlines the accumulation process.
Capitalism is entwined with the rhetoric of potential; Marx's metaphorical use of the vampire and werewolf animate the eldritch desire for perpetuity. 27 The politics of potential, as they manifest as insatiability and endlessness, legitimise the techno-utopian fantasy of immortality. We see the asserts that there could be so many digital people living in vast computer simulations millions or billions of years in the future that one of our most important moral obligations today is to take actions that ensure as many of these digital people come into existence as possible. 28 Longtermists claim to be focused on "safeguarding and improving humanity's long-term prospects," 29 but Torres notes that their position is fuelled by self-interested libertarianism and eugenics.
Although longtermism has faced recent controversy because of its associations with FTX, a now- A feminist politics invested in equitable world-making must aim to circumvent the patriarchal, colonial legacy of technoscience. To this end, I suggest a redirection from XF's call for more alienation to dealienation. I am motivated by Stefania Barca's ecofeminist political economy framework predicated on a paradigm of degrowth. She describes dealienation as "the process by which Marx's four forms of estrangement-from the products of labor and the natural world, from the labor process, from 28 Émile P. Torres, "Understanding 'longtermism': Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic," Salon, August 20, 2022, https://www.salon.com/2022/08/20/understanding-longtermism-why-this-suddenly-influential-philosophy-is-so/. species-being and from other humans-are actively reversed through collective action." 32 Unlike xenofeminism, an ecofeminist engagement with degrowth is particularly attuned to the struggles of working-class people in the shaping of ecological class consciousness. Barca locates labour as a site of and for democratic decision-making. Specifically, she argues that a political strategy based on degrowth and dealienation decreases the space between workers and the products of their labour. As Barca's investigation documents, degrowth initiatives concretise the relationship between feminism and ecological justice. The combined framework identifies "the gendered division of labor" as a primary cause of ecological crisis and for this reason, situates "reproduction as a crucial terrain for anti-capitalist struggle and ecological revolution." 33 We can trace the origins of this orientation from the shift from pagan society to capitalism. Federici reveals how land privatisation in the 17 th century coincided with the feminisation of labour, leaving many women with few options to work for a wage (prostitution being a common one). Land expropriation created a power relationship in which employers could cut workers' pay and lengthen the working day, all while prices for foodstuffs were increasing. 34 Women, who paid the highest price under this new regime, participated in anti-enclosure riots, facing imprisonment and further marginalisation as a result. Today, women-led movements like the Global Women's Strike continue to underscore the connection between work and environmental sustainability at great personal risk.
As Barca's and Federici's examinations demonstrate, women have long been engaged in social protest.
Crucially, their discursive emphasis on social reproduction illustrates how the value of nature, in every manifestation, is measured in terms of extractability. The body is the primary link between nature and the production process; the body is a conduit for capital. For Barca, exposing the hard, nonfungible line of the human body renders the forces of reproduction visible. These forces are the "(racialized, feminized, dispossessed) subjects who reproduce humanity by taking care of the physical environment that makes life itself possible." 35 From Barca's account, we learn of the brutal murders of Brazilian forest defenders Zé Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo. Barca's narrative proximity to these human subjects, and the natural resources they sometimes die defending, reminds us of "the fragility of the material world." 36 Despite the interdependency between the relations of production, "capitalism . .
. diminishes or annihilates the life-enhancing potentialities of the forces of reproduction." 37 Economic growth is contingent on a condition of chronic precarity, but precarity eventually gives way to collapse.
As the past two decades have viscerally verified, bubbles always burst. If alienation is a "distinguishing 32 Barca, "The Labor(s) of Degrowth," 209. trait of the capitalist work-relation", then dealienation and degrowth offer a counter manoeuvre. 38 A dealienation of re/production recognises that the forces of production are finite. Bodies, in their present incarnation, eventually die; machines wear out from abiotic stress; natural resources are depleted. All matter-mortal or machinic-is subject to the irreversibility of time.
To imagine a degrowth model along the lines suggested by ecofeminist socialism, I draw on Nick Dyer-Witheford's "prospectus for biocommunism, a communism emerging from the catastrophes capital now inflicts throughout the bios, the realm of life itself." 39 Dyer-Witheford's formulation envisions six elements essential to biocommunist organisation: "new disaster relief systems; opening borders to migrants fleeing calamity; expropriation of capital from crisis-critical industries; rationing of consumption; mobilization of emergency labour; and ecological and economic planning." 40 As Dyer-Witheford reveals, the current construction of emergency infrastructure is "shot through with authoritarianism and discrimination" to the extent that vital systems cater to commerce. 41 Both Hurricane Sandy and Covid-19 evidence how low-income populations are further marginalised in times of disaster. As a collectivist mode of social reproduction, biocommunism emphasises what Nancy Fraser terms a "politics of care" that resists the ways in which capitalism instrumentalizes crisis. 42 Dyer-Witheford suggests both state-led initiatives and communal mutual aid practices to this end. The discursive emphasis on care continues in biocommunism's recognition of the "proletarian nature of global migration." 43 The solution to the refugee crisis is not simply a matter of permitting the "right to move," but also one that enforces a "right to stay." The opening of borders must be accompanied by the termination of conditions, like military interventions and ecological malpractice, that motivate migrant flight in the first place. 44 Dealienation is baked into biocommunism insofar as it advocates for "new forms of communal ownership [and] the abolition of privatised ownership and production." 45 This emphasis on social equalisation also manifests in biocommunism's call for rationing as both a limit and a promise, as well as in a radical rethinking of labour. In a biocommunist framing, "essential work" is part and parcel of "a system 2) cultivate a framework of reproductive justice that endows an equal right to reproduce on one's terms, 3) de-commodify reproductive technology like IVF and egg freezing so that it is financially accessible, 4) advance a rationing of resources rather than a Malthusian approach to population control, 5) envision domestic work and social reproduction as essential work, and 6) marshal a biopolitics that underscores the importance of finitude-that is, a model of planning that attends to the fragility of the material world. Together, these feminist inflexions in biocommunism intend to reckon with both ecological and corporeal limits. If, as Abou Farman remarks, "[i]mmortalism . . . saves posthuman lives", then an emphasis on degrowth and decay endeavours to save life as we know it-that is, life that is predisposed to mortality. 49 To reiterate, there is no degrowth without dealienation. 50 Inasmuch as any feminist politics strives to engage anti-capitalist practices, it must also strive to " that see no recourse to ecological preservation. 52 These fatalistic orientations neglect the fact that food security was an issue long before overpopulation emerged as a political ideology. In fact, earlier historical records underscore the problem of low birth rates, compounded by pandemic conditions, particularly as it materialised in the political economy of accumulation and extraction. In the 16 th century, Europe began to experience population decline because of "the reluctance of the poor to reproduce themselves." 53 The population crisis coincided with an economic crisis resulting from labour shortages and dwindling trade, for it was not the ruling class that perished at higher rates but rather the day-laborers. According to Federici, this period of demographic and economic plight sets in motion "the first elements of a population policy and a 'bio-power' regime," including disciplinary methods for procreation. 54 This is all to say that capital, as an always-accelerating deathless phenomenon, cannot help but create conditions under which the population is inherently beset by crisis. A move toward degrowth refigures population empowerment as part of the process of social equalisation. A biocommunist approach to population affirms Marx's "hatred for Malthusianism" insofar as it affirms the proletariat's "right to love." 55 Although Henri Lefebvre argues "this hatred was not motivated by a moral principle, and even less by any populationist policy," he admits that Marxist thought is concerned with "the intensification 13 "Mortal" is a curious word. As a noun, it denotes a human being; as an adjective, it describes the condition of said noun as causing death or fatality. 57 Etymologically speaking, life can only exist in a reciprocal tension with death. According to Donna McCormack, being is always already haunted precisely because it is conditioned by time. 58 This haunted quality in ontology is especially apparent in organ transplantation, where the dead "other" is incorporated into a living body. 59 We witness a similar haunting in autoimmune disease, where a once-healthy body fails to cohere with the subjectivity it envelops. Even under optimal conditions, there is something already unfamiliar in the relationship between the body and the self. For example, I cannot discern my internal organs from those of someone whose age and lifestyle are proximal to mine. That we are not necessarily privy to our own bodies makes manifest the complex relationship between biology and subjectivity and between vitality and death.
If the line between life and death is already tenuous, how are we to psychically navigate the terms of living? I find an unlikely ally in Benjamin Bratton, who argues for a positive biopolitics that "accepts death as part of life." 60 Similarly, Rosi Braidotti suggests "an affirmative posthuman theory of death" to expand an understanding of life as one that is interconnected rather than discrete. 61 In other words, a posthuman theory of death advances ecological, rather than individualistic, thinking and practice. As My intention is to identify a thread between XF and ecofeminism in thinking of the body-as-technē.
Pregnancy is a violent process; it is unequivocally much more dangerous to the future (or would-be) mother than abortion. 65 Gestation and delivery involve myriad health risks, including hypertension and diabetes, as well as ectopic pregnancy and excessive bleeding, both of which can be life-threatening.
Such risks are disproportionately magnified for low-income mothers and even more so for Black mothers. This insight is not meant to reduce the psychic and physical pain of those gestators who face difficulty when attempting to conceive. However, it is intended to expose the destruction inherent to reproduction, particularly as it develops under the conditions of privatised healthcare.
In addition to the biopolitical violence embedded in pregnancy, the biological (but not necessarily human) process responsible for the creation of life is an inherently violent ordeal. In order to conceive and carry a foetus to term, the gestator's immune system must be defeated by the placenta, a temporary foetal (and, therefore, foreign) organ that begins to develop after implantation. In the process of downregulating the immune system, the placenta's tendrils attach themselves to the uterus to transfer blood between mother and foetus (such an image conjures the cosmic Cthulhu). This process demonstrates the technological capacities inherent to the human body, in turn animating what Braidotti calls the "immanent force of zoē, or life in its nonhuman aspects." 66 Considering that mammals likely evolved from egg-laying to live birth because of an ancient retrovirus, we might begin to think of the placenta as the original prosthesis, or even the original mother. 67 The nonhuman martyr, as it were, marshals destructive methods for life-giving ends. And yet, the cultural fetishisation of the child as a symbol of (and for) the future conceals the destruction essential to the creation of life. Like transhuman immortality, we see a logic predicated on endless potentiality rather than finitude in the puritanical vision of procreation.
I turn to Sophie Lewis, who builds on the feminist Marxist call for family abolition to disengage from the discursive emphasis on potential as it manifests in reproduction. Lewis examines surrogacy to identify the myriad ways in which the gestational body is alienated from the product(s) of its labour, but gestation in all forms (whether surrogated or not) is oftentimes an alienating experience. As engagements with Foucault's biopolitical framework demonstrate, the clinic is responsible for both 65 I use "mother" in addition to "gestator" to acknowledge the history between women's bodies and the social constructions of reproduction. 66 Braidotti,The Posthuman,66. 67 Heather Radke and Becca Bressler, "Everybody's Got One," August 20, 2021, Radiolab, podcast, https://radiolab.org/episodes/everybodys-got-one. medicalizing pregnancy and pathologizing women's bodies. 68 For this reason, medicine and public health participate in the social construction of the child-as-future metaphor, often at the expense of maternal wellbeing. Lewis suggests we shift our ideological orientation toward gestation from one that reinforces privatisation to one that takes a decolonial approach. Full surrogacy describes the "[cultivation of] non-oedipal kinship and sharing reciprocal mothering labors between many individuals and generations." 69 Lewis identifies queer co-parenting, mutual aid, and open adoption as methods for resistance against the commercialised, heteronormative model of familial relationships. I see such methods as manifestations of feminist biocommunism, particularly in the way they radically re-envision parenting models and domestic labour.
In addition to illuminating the systemic injustice embedded in commercial gestation, I am interested in exposing the ways contraceptive technologies have reinforced a politics of potential to serve the interest of the market. Different forms of birth control have been widely deployed as methods for population control while espousing a discourse of freedom. Inasmuch as birth control affords women reproductive agency, it also reinforces a biopolitical model that endeavours to spare the state from unplanned (i.e., undesirable) pregnancies. In other words, contraceptive technologies have aided the biopolitical project that prevents some lives from being born "so that future others might live more prosperously." 70 Michelle Murphy pointedly remarks that "birth control, in its military function, work[ed] to stem the tide of Communism." 71 Once again, an emphasis on individualism and agency in technoscience serves the aims of capital.
Returning to Lewis, whose argument is structured primarily around abolition rather than destruction, I find her somewhat throwaway remark that considers the world-destroying potential in gestation particularly motivating. 72 What politics and world-making arise from dreams of destruction? Can a greater focus on death and degrowth create more equitable living conditions for humans and nonhumans?
Such questions begin to carve paths for what Bratton calls positive biopolitics that resists the trap of techno-utopianism (a major flaw in much of Bratton's thinking). To this end, I suggest a reconfiguration of procreation as not only a human right but inextricably tied to death insofar as it is conditioned by the mortal body. Although procreation has historically sustained labour power (in turn, sustaining capital), the combination of social reproduction and class struggle has advanced social infrastructure like healthcare and welfare programs. 73 In this way, social reproduction sustains life itself through the politics of care. Gestation is, therefore, always concerned with the means of reproduction. We come into the world because somebody goes into labour.
The Left's embrace of anti-natalism as both a moral and ecological imperative, aside from its turn toward a self-imposed eugenic fatalism (as opposed to a vital-fatalism), neglects both the gestating body's world-destroying capabilities and the role that gestation plays in health. In an interview with Time magazine, Toni Morrison exposes the discontinuity between the body's reproductive phases and the socially accepted age at which people ought to reproduce. 74 Morrison laments that the body's reproductive capacity is tethered to the economy: the body's "nature"-that is, its technē-can only be realised if a person's income can afford to procreate. The social imagination around reproduction, as Morrison underscores, is driven by ruling-class interests. Morrison's vision, in which she describes the possibility for young mothers to also lead fulfilling professional lives, animates the destructive potential in gestation. To dissociate the body, and the process of reproduction, from the market, is both life-affirming and world-destroying. To reinterpret an XF refrain, let the proletariat-in all its gender configurations-bloom! My argument for a vital-fatal body politics also recognises that gestation and birth play parts in reproductive health. For women who suffer from autoimmune disease, pregnancy has been shown to alleviate symptoms by downregulating the immune system. New research reveals that nulliparity, the medical term to describe a woman who has never given birth, increases women's risk of developing uterine fibroids and certain cancers. 75 To be sure, and as I mentioned earlier in this section, the process of bringing life into this world is not without risk. But it is a risk that underlines our feeling of responsibility to others and the world. 76 An equal emphasis on vitality and finitude reinforces the temporal, collective condition of life. Inasmuch as reproduction grounds humanity's "right to stay," it also sets the finite terms of life. For this reason, life-affirming principles and practices must strive to secure both an equal right to live and an equal predisposition to die. technological to the extent that it is natural (which is to say that it is socially constructed). The body's natural, technological capacity, however, suggests new ways of thinking about nature beyond human construction and entrapment. For this reason, we might begin to reconsider nature as a force of zoē and as such, also a means for destabilising presuppositions associated with the "human." Against the metanarrative suggested by discourse that separates nature from culture, Braidotti urges us to engage with "a materialist, vitalist, embodied and embedded" theory of posthumanism. 77 This iteration of posthumanism "avoid[s] the contempt for the flesh and the trans-humanist fantasy of escape from the finite materiality of the enfleshed self." 78 Along this line of thinking, a vital-fatal body politics understands nature as an instrument for population empowerment. It finds the largely automatic and somewhat nonhuman processes in gestation both destructive and life-affirming.

Conclusion
Part of the work of what has been historically described as "intellectual labour" is reinterpreting and stewarding ageing ideas so that they continue to generate meaning. Some ideas age better than others; as I have demonstrated, critics of transhumanism have revealed its political baggage, particularly its eugenic lineage and apparent trajectory. I realise that my application of feminist politics aligns with earlier waves of feminist scholarship that emphasise embodiment as much as it does with thinkers associated with xenofeminism-or perhaps it is more accurate to say that I find xenofeminism and earlier feminisms equally problematic. As much as I am moved by Arendt's framing of natality "as a miracle that saves the world," I realise that this sentiment could be wielded by political reactionaries who value women only for their reproductive power. 79 Moreover, Arendt, like many Western philosophers, places stock in a dialectics of freedom through action (made manifest "by virtue of being born") without much attention to the social construction of gender and the way it manifests in labour practices and politics in general. 80 In the same spirit of critique, we would do well to remember that anti-naturalism has also leveraged political decisions permitting the widespread use of forever chemicals insofar as gambles on the body's adaptability for the purpose of prolonged extraction. And while I see emancipatory potential in gender hacktivism, my fidelity lies with corporeality-not the corporatisation of life materials.
Historically, imperial, colonial, and patriarchal powers reap the rewards of biological manipulation.
For this reason, we ought to seek and demand grounds for mutual responsibility rather than claiming territories of freedom. I am tempted to further distance myself from the conservative pro-life agenda, but I hope my devout allegiance to the Communist cause has proven that my argument is not sympathetic to puritanical thinking. Rather, I have endeavoured to articulate a natalism against the eugenic pro-life ideology that continues to imbue political and moral structures. My understanding of life as intimately tied to death has intended to combat the neoliberal emphasis on potential and alienation embedded in technoscience. In other words, it has sought to underscore "the expressive intensity of a Life we share with multiple others, here and now." 81 My lot is cast with those who share a sense of responsibility to the material world.