Reproducing Plenty: Settler Colonialism, Agriculture, and Fertility Science in Palestine-IsraelTamar Novick in conversation with Will Davis and Hollyamber Kennedy
From the early days of European intervention and colonial settlement in Palestine—cutting across the late Ottoman, British, and Israeli rules—travelers, state officials, and settlers expected the land to be plentiful, a “land flowing with milk and honey.” By way of fulfilling such expectations, the configuration of the environment and more-than-human bodies was intertwined with political governance. Focusing on the 1920s–1960s, the talk scrutinises the problem of infertility, which threatened the existence of the entire settlement project. It focuses on a group of Jewish settler gynaecologists and veterinarians and their collaboration with farmers, and examines their attempt to deal with the reproductive limitations of the human and animal body and their efforts to realise plenty.