Neoliberal Progressivism? a Look into the Management of Dying and Killing

This talk examines two progressive mobilizations, which target the sovereign management of dying and killing (see Agamben, 1998): the anti-capital punishment movement and advocacy for end-of-life care. I argue that both mobilizations have appropriated neoliberal arts of government: first, fiscal austerity apparatuses, which discipline and contain sovereign spending; second, economistic schemata, which make the private enterprise a “universally generalized social model” and analyze “non-economic behavior through a grid of economic intelligibility” (Foucault, 2008: 242, 248).

Anti-capital punishment activists have invoked the high cost of executions, seeking to ban what they deem morally reprehensible by criticizing its fiscal consequences. In mobilizing support along fiscal lines, they refer to an economy of punishment, which combines both moral and monetary valuations. The state is required to perform its power over life in accordance with austere budgetary management. Along a similar governmental logic, promoters of end-of-life care in the U.S. have made financial arguments against the use of aggressive life-prolonging treatment in dying patients: they highlight the high price of treating the dying and argue that scaling down on invasive life-prolonging care—and making it more moderate and humane—would also be economical. This effort to cap spending is accompanied by extensive and ever increasing efforts to encourage people to reflect on their “wishes” and “goals” concerning care at the end of life. Formal documents such as Do Not Resuscitate, Do Not Intubate, and Advance Directives urge people to reflect on what medical interventions they would and would not want to have if their condition declines, rank these preferences in order, and put them on record. These forms set an expectation that people would think and act in accordance with the homo economicus blueprint and have explicit, communicable, documentable, clearly ordered, consistent, and transitive sets of preferences.

Based on these cases, I discuss neoliberalism and progressivism as opposing poles within the same liberal paradigm. Both image the state as separate from the economy, conceive of the economy as a self-contained domain governed by distinctive rules and truths, and legitimize state “intervention” based on its ability to “improve” the economy. Disagreement is about whether state operations can create such improvement, yet both perspectives see state legitimacy as connected to its interventions’ (in)efficiency. Thus, when progressive advocates regard something as morally reprehensible, they resist state investment in its economy. Conveniently, this stance corresponds to the neoliberal logic, which sees almost any state intervention as futile and immoral. Neoliberal arts of government become boundary objects (Star and Griesemer, 1989), which resonate with opposing perspectives and establish unholy alliances. Progressives as neoliberals end up advocating for disciplining sovereign power and for cultivating rational, calculative, and individuated agencies.

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave and Macmillan.

Star, Susan Leigh and James R. Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects.” Social Studies of Science 19(3): 387-420.