Skip Navigation


Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Advance Access originally published online on December 11, 2008
Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2008 33(6):538-557; doi:10.1093/jmp/jhn029
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
33/6/538    most recent
jhn029v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bishop, J. P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Bishop, J. P.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Biopolitics, Terri Schiavo, and the Sovereign Subject of Death

Jeffrey P. Bishop

Vanderbilt University, USA

Address correspondence to: Jeffrey P. Bishop, Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, Vanderbilt University, 2523 West End Ave., Suite 400, Nashville, TN 37203 USA. E-mail: jeffrey.bishop{at}vanderbilt.edu


  Abstract

Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. (Foucault, 1984, 85)

In this essay, I take a note from Michel Foucault regarding the notion of biopolitics. For Foucault, biopolitics has both repressive and constitutive properties. Foucault's claim is that with the rise of modern government, the state became exceedingly concerned about the body politic, the bodies that make up the polis, including the health of those bodies. However, Giorgio Agamben claims that Foucault and all western political philosophy misses the relationship between power and Sovereignty, with disastrous results and totalizing tendencies. I explore the case of Terri Schiavo claiming that the social conservatives have attempted to politicize bare life in its legal maneuverings, but I also show how the social liberals open an uncontrollable space between life and death. Both the left and the right miss the aporia at the heart of western political philosophy, and bioethics is complicit in the totalizing effects of contemporary medicine.

Keywords: bare life, biopolitics, Schiavo, sovereignty, sovereign power


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 J Med PhilosHome page
M. T. Lysaught
Docile Bodies: Transnational Research Ethics as Biopolitics
J Med Philos, August 1, 2009; 34(4): 384 - 408.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 J Med PhilosHome page
A. E. Hinkley
"How Are We Defining Our Terms Here?": The Defining the Semantic Meaning of Terms in Bioethical Debates
J Med Philos, January 15, 2009; (2009) jhn034v1.
[Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.