Abstract

This article engages with both queer theories of temporality and new materialist theories of kinship in order to analyse the reproductive politics of Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film Arrival. It does so in order to speculate on what happens to the concept of reproductive choice when time is in a loop. Arrival uses time travel to disrupt the linearity of reproduction by allowing its protagonist, Louise, to see that a future child will die an early, horrible death, yet still having her choose to become pregnant. It is my contention that this narrative decision untethers reproduction from futurity in ways that might be productive for rethinking the heteronormative futurism at the heart of contemporary reproductive politics.