Chapter 3 - (In)conceivable Futures: Henry David Thoreau and Reproduction’s Queer Ecology

Summary

This chapter intervenes in ongoing queer ecocritical debates about reproductive futurity by turning to Henry David Thoreau’s engagement with nurse insects and trees. It demonstrates how Thoreau dislocates biological reproduction in both space and time, urging us to attend to a broader range of participants – and a broader range of contributing actions – in our account of the reproductive process. Arguing that such a complex, multispecies understanding of reproduction distinguishes Thoreau from both contemporary environmentalists, whose rhetoric often relies on normative logics of reproductivity, and queer theorists, who often critique such logics, the chapter theorizes an environmental ethic informed by the extant queerness of reproduction itself. In contrast to the contemporary activist organization “Conceivable Future,” which helps women decide whether to have children in a time of climate catastrophe, such a reading of Thoreau offers possibilities for solidarity and social change that customary definitions of reproduction have rendered inconceivable.