Inheritance at the Limits

Abstract

Inheritance is both an unsettled and structuring concept of contemporary life. This paper argues that inheritance is an analytic through which difference comes to matter. Following Casarino’s (2002) discussion of ‘last’ and ‘other’ limits, I show that inheritance both serves as a mechanism through which difference is captured and domesticated into systems of technoscience and law, and that it evidences the inability of these systems to capture fully its alterity. Taking a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary approach, the paper develops an analytic that explores and expands biosocial understandings of inheritance through two ‘limit cases’: first, the search for and reclamation of inheritance dispossessed in the Transatlantic trade in enslaved people; second, questions of queer reproduction and inheritance. The paper concludes by offering an analytic of inheritance not simply as a force of difference but also as a way of orienting political and ethical thought in the Anthropocene.