“A Victory for White Life” Reproduction, Replacement, and a Handmaid’s Tale

This chapter brings contemporary population replacement conspiracy theories and the recent pushback against abortion rights within the same analytical space, with the aim of exploring what critical theorist Alys Weinbaum calls the race/reproduction bind. To investigate this ideological constellation which often works in more concealed ways, the chapter first looks at a recent instance in which this bind took centre stage, namely when the overruling of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court was hailed as a “victory for white life” at a MAGA political event. The chapter subsequently turns to an influential fiction story of our times that revolves around this race/reproduction bind, namely Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Yet, even if this bind is foundational to the original novel, it is pushed out of sight in the iconic television series that shapes the popular understanding of the story, the analysis shows. It is important, the chapter concludes, to attune analyses of replacement discourse to this race/reproduction bind and render its ideological workings more visible.