ZOE, BIOS and the LANGUAGE of BIOPOWER by Sarah K. Hansen
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ZOE, BIOS AND THE LANGUAGE OF BIOPOWER By Sarah K. Hansen Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Philosophy August, 2010 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Kelly Oliver Professor Charles Scott Professor David Wood Professor Lisa Guenther Professor Ellen Armour ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of my dissertation committee. Kelly Oliver served as Director and was a helpful reader and interlocutor from the project’s earliest stages to its completion here. I thank Kelly for her generous and patient mentorship. Charles Scott served as my first reader and shared thoughtful criticism on all Foucauldian fronts. Lisa Guenther gave extensive and invaluable commentary on chapter drafts. I am grateful for her friendship and for our many conversations about Agamben and biopolitics. As the project developed David Wood and my external reader, Ellen Armour, offered important suggestions and provocations. I feel lucky to have worked with such an amazing group of philosophers and I thank them for the opportunity. Many thanks to the Department of Philosophy and its spirited and supportive graduate student community. I am particularly indebted to Jeffrey Tlumak and Rebecca Davenport for numerous acts of institutional and professional assistance. Graduate students Matt Whitt, Sarah Tyson and Carolyn Cusick have been unbelievable colleagues and even better friends. Matt deserves special acknowledgement for enduring several years as both my housemate and my main dissertation comrade. Nicole Seymour, Rebecca Chapman, Sammy Shaw, Jordan Caress and Alex Green joined me in drinks and distraction around Nashville. Without their senses of humor and adventure I would not have survived, and eventually come to love, the South. Maggie Field, Chase Strangio, Bea Menendez, Megan McHugh and Ali Jennings may have been farther away, in New York and Chicago, but they were close to my heart throughout the writing of this dissertation. Finally, my parents, Ed and Katy, and my ii brother, Andy, loved me through the ups and downs of this project. I am fortunate to have such an supportive and understanding family. I love them dearly. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................ ii I. INTRODUCTION: TERRI SCHIAVO AND THE POLITICS OF LIFE...................1 A Strange Witness..............................................................................................1 The Biopolitics of Life and Death .....................................................................6 The Language/s of Terri Schiavo.....................................................................19 Foucault, Agamben, Kristeva ..........................................................................29 II. FABRICATED LIFE: FOUCAULT AND THE BIO- OF BIOPOWER ..................41 A “Negative Modality”....................................................................................41 Genealogy and the Fabrication of Life ............................................................45 Governmentality: From the Pastorate to Neo-liberalism.................................52 Sovereignty, Thanatos, Biopower....................................................................67 III. AGAMBEN AND THE BIOPOLITICS OF LANGUAGE ......................................80 Levi’s Paradox, Agamben’s Paradigm .............................................................80 From the Metaphysics of Voice to the Machination of Man............................86 Infancy, Animality and the Limits of Language.............................................101 Remnants and Relationality ............................................................................117 IV. KRISTEVA AND THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF BIOPOWER.....................................126 Melancholia and the Mute Symptom of Biopower........................................126 The “Power Vacuum” and “Soft Totalitarianism”.........................................131 Psychic Revolt and Sacred Experience as Biopolitical Resistance ...............144 Zoe, Bios, Biography .....................................................................................161 V. CONCLUSION........................................................................................................172 iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: TERRI SCHIAVO AND THE POLITICS OF LIFE A Strange Witness On March 18, 2005 the U.S. House of Representative’s Committee on Government Reform issued subpoenas to Florida residents Michael and Terri Schiavo. The subpoenas summoned the Schiavos to “testify” on issues relevant to the Committee’s investigation into “treatment options provided to incapacitated patients to advance the[ir] quality of life.”1 In light of Mrs. Schiavo’s long and now well-known traumas, some observers noted a certain irony, if not obscenity, to the subpoena’s order for testimony. Having suffered severe anoxic brain damage as a result of a cardiac arrest in 1990, Terri Schiavo lived in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for 15 years, unconscious and unable, among other things, to speak. Although the subpoenas asked that Terri testify about her incapacity, she was in fact incapable of testifying, at least in the traditional sense of providing oral or written statements. To be sure, the strange nature of the committee’s request was mediated, if not thoroughly overshadowed, by the strange circumstances and intent under which it was authored. The subpoenas sought Terri’s testimony in order to stall the March 18th removal of her life support, a PEG feeding tube that provided her nutrition and hydration. The removal date had come at the end of a nearly seven year legal battle over whether, given the devastating and irreversible nature of Terri’s brain damage, to maintain or withdraw 1 U.S. House of Representatives. Committee on Government Reform. Subpoena (H.R. 1332). (S. 539). March 18, 2005. Washington: Government Printing Office, 2005. 1 the tube’s life-prolonging assistance. From Michael Schiavo’s 1998 withdrawal petition, through a series of more and less credible appeals launched in Florida by her parents Robert and Mary Schindler, to a frenzy of attention from the national media and government—by March 2005, Terri Schiavo had become a flashpoint for negotiating “right to die” questions in medical, religious and political contexts centered on life. As the Committee on Government Reform issued its subpoenas, the media was ablaze with Terri Schiavo coverage, its commentary focused less on the prospect of her courtroom testimony than on then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s warning that the law “protects a witness from anyone who […] influences, obstructs, or impedes an inquiry or investigation by Congress.”2 In spite of all the alarms sounded around the 10 page legal document, the committee’s extraordinary maneuver to earn Terri Schiavo witness protection lacked the jurisdiction to have any legal force or credibility. Terri’s feeding tubes were removed at 1:30 p.m. on March 18th. Congressional and executive efforts to reinsert the tubes began almost immediately and each “save Terri” tactic that followed would prove more dramatic than the last. In one case, the “Act for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo” signed March 21, 2005, political leaders even flagrantly sacrificed the principles of judicial independence and the separation of powers in an effort to win the removal order’s overturning.3 That such lengths were undertaken to keep Terri Schiavo 2 Arthur Caplan, James McCartney and Dominic Sisti. “Congressional Statements and Actions Related to the Schiavo Case.” In The Case of Terri Schiavo: Ethics at the End of Life. (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2006), 136. 3 The Act ordered a district court to review of Terri Schiavo’s constitutional and federal claims but stipulated that the court “(2) shall not consider whether these claims were previously ‘raised, considered, or decided in State court proceedings;’ (3) shall not engage in ‘abstention in favor of State court proceedings;’ and (4) shall not decided the case on the basis of ‘whether remedies available in the State courts have been exhausted.” In short, the Act unduly dictated how the 2 alive is evidence of the massive political controversy brought to her bedside. In the absence of oral and written statements of her own, a din of pundit voices and a sea of editorial pages had testified on her behalf. By the time Terri Schiavo passed away on March 31, 2005 her life and death had taken on a medical, political and religious importance that few could have anticipated. One need not underestimate the difficulty of those questions posed through Terri Schiavo—questions regarding the limits of life and death, the “sanctity” or “quality” of the former and the “dignity” of the latter—in order to wonder how they gathered so saliently around a single woman at this particular historical moment. Thousands of families make the decision to withdraw life support every year. And of those unfortunate situations in which the courts become involved, In re Schiavo was a typical rather than exceptional case; for individuals in a persistent vegetative state without a written end-of- life directive, the Florida adjudications were entirely consistent with established legal precedent and procedures. Set in contrast with the two most influential precedents