READING THE STATE WRITING: MICHEL FOUCAULT AND THE PRODUCTION OF AMERICAN POLITICAL CULTURE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kirk S. Kidwell, B.A., M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Debra Moddelmog, Adviser Professor James Phelan ___________________________________ Professor Amy Shuman Adviser Department of English Copyright by Kirk S. Kidwell 2003 ABSTRACT In this dissertation, I seek to answer two critical questions. First, what transformations have occurred in American political culture such that, in 1798, when the U.S. Congress enacted one of the first pieces of health-related legislation the heart of the debate was whether providing for the health care of the citizenry was a legitimate object for governmental action, but when, 200 years later, Congress debates health care legislation the issue is no longer whether the state should take action but what action the state should take? Second, what form would a Foucauldian approach to this question take and what answers would such an approach produce? Accordingly, the dissertation has a two-fold focus: (1) an analysis of Michel Foucault’s methodologies of archaeology and genealogy and of his thought concerning discourse, power, and government; (2) a deployment of that analysis in an investigation of the production of American political culture since the founding of the American Republic in 1787-1788. In other words, the critical problem the dissertation addresses concerns the development and application of Foucauldian critical methodologies to the analysis of American political culture. Chapter One introduces both the investigation of Foucault’s thought about political culture and the critique of American political culture through an analysis of Understanding AIDS, a brochure the federal government sent to every household in the nation in 1988. The second chapter offers a close reading of Foucault’s genealogy of Western political culture in order to establish a (Foucauldian) theory of bio-political culture. Chapter Three ii extends this investigation by reworking Foucault’s theory of discourse and by deploying that theory in an archaeological analysis of the political discourse circulating during the debate over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. In the final chapter, I offer a genealogical analysis of the emergence of American bio-political culture during the first decades of the twentieth century, based upon Foucault’s concept of power and power- knowledge relations. I conclude the dissertation by considering how the theory of political culture and the methodology for reading political cultural discourses and practices which I have developed might be used to analyze other state bio-political campaigns. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank, first, my parents, without whose help and support none of this would have been possible. I especially want to thank my adviser, Debra Moddelmog, whose assistance throughout the long process of researching and writing this dissertation has been invaluable. I also want to express my appreciation for the other members of my dissertation committee, James Phelan and Amy Shuman, for their insights and encouragement. And I would like to acknowledge the many members of the English Department at The Ohio State University with whom I have worked since I began as an undergraduate student, including Mark Conroy, Anthony Libby, Marlene Longenecker, David Riede, and Susan Williams. iv VITA April 28, 1957 ................................................Born – Columbus, Ohio 1992................................................................B.A. English, The Ohio State University 1996................................................................M.A. English, The Ohio State University 1993 – 1997....................................................Graduate Teaching Associate, English The Ohio State University 1997 – 2002....................................................Instructor, English University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire 2002 - 2003 ....................................................Graduate Teaching Associate, English The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Vita.......................................................................................................................................v Chapters: Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 1. The Critique of Political Culture: Michel Foucault and Understanding AIDS....................................................................9 2. Life, Population, Government: Toward a Foucauldian Theory of Bio-Political Culture ..............................................58 3. “We the People . Do Ordain and Establish”; Discourse and the Ratification of the U.S. Constitution, 1787-1788 ........................144 4. The State as Pastor: Power and the Emergence of American Bio-Political Culture ..................................231 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................299 List of References ............................................................................................................305 vi INTRODUCTION In 1798, the U.S. Congress debated one of the first proposed pieces of health- related legislation—the Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen—which would impose a twenty cent per month tax on the wages of seamen to establish a national fund to provide health care for seamen and to erect hospitals for their use. Though the bill was ultimately enacted and signed into law by President George Washington, it occasioned considerable debate in Congress, a debate that reveals a great deal about the political culture of the early American Republic. At the heart of the debate was the question of whether providing for the health care of the citizenry was a legitimate object for governmental action, and especially action by the federal government. For opponents, the legislation marked an intrusion of the national government into the internal affairs of state governments. Rep. Joseph B. Varnum of Massachusetts, for example, confessed that “he did not know but that the United States have the power to make the proposed regulation; but he thought it was a business which more particularly concerned the Legislatures of the individual State” (Annals of Congress 1851, 1391). Similarly, Representative Samuel Sewall, also of Massachusetts opposed the bill because his state already had in place a system to care for the health of sailors. The problem was not with the states of New England, which furnished nearly two-thirds of the sailors serving on American ships, but rather with 1 states in the South which had no mechanism to provide for sailors who fell ill or were injured. Accordingly, the solution, in Sewall’s view, was not to have the federal government create a national system; instead, those states which had failed to address the needs of sailors ought to establish a system like that of the New England states. For Sewall, the provision of health care for sailors or any other American citizen was simply not the responsibility of the federal government. Proponents of the legislation countered that the problem was indeed a national one; sailors put into port cities all along the Atlantic seaboard and could easily find themselves sick or disabled in any state. So meeting this need was the responsibility of the federal government, not the state. Further, the legislation was debated in terms of not only the appropriateness of federal action but also the objects of that action. Were sailors a unique class of American citizens who were incapable of caring for themselves and therefore in need of special assistance? Representative Edward Livingston of New York argued that sailors were indeed such a class: “A sailor . is concerned only for the present, and is incapable of thinking of, or inattentive to, future welfare; he is, therefore, a proper object for the care of Government, and whilst he can provide an asylum for infirmity or old age, by the sacrifices of a few gills of rum, he will not scruple to do it” (Annals of Congress 1798, 1388). By contrast, Representative Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania contended that he “had not seen this distinction between them and other classes of citizens, and, therefore, believed them to be capable of taking care of themselves” (1392). For yet others, the issue was not whether sailors were a special class of citizens meriting governmental assistance, but whether government, federal or state, was responsible for providing for the health care of the American people. Sewall, for instance, maintained that this was a 2 matter of “public charity” (1386). Sailors ought not to be taxed for their health care, nor should government be involved; instead, “the laws of reason and charity called upon the public at large in support of unfortunate men of this description” (1386). Similarly, Varnum held that if sailors merited assistance, “the people at large . ought to be called upon to support them