Rose and Novas, "Biological Citizenship" (2005)

 The group began with some questions.

[1] pp. 446-7: “These vectors from below….” what does it mean to “pluralize” biomedical truth?

[2] Why is this framed in terms of “citizenship”? The essay moves away from traditional forms of state-based citizenship. What might be the motivation for this conceptual category? Why not “persons” or “subjects” or some other kind of category.

[3] pp. 447: the authors offer an interpretation of the Prozac website. What is going on methodologically here? Are there other examples of this kind of analysis from other works with which we are familiar? What are the limitations, or capacities of this kind of approach?

[4] Does the politics of hope come at the expense of the politics of despair? Does this optimism mask social problems that exist? Is there more to say about social inequalities in this piece? The authors frame their aim as descriptive: what is the goal of description? How is it related to social critique?

[5] What is the relationship between race and biological citizenship? It seems like they are contrasting past eugenics-based conceptions and present practices. But how does race play into, or shape, biological citizenship of the present? 

[7] pp. 454: Is the concept of biovalue helpful?

Discussion followed:

What do we make of the aim of description? How might this article be considered an example of social sciences the framework of “critical red-escription”? Does the fact that they refer to people as “ethical or moral pioneers” imply some sort of valorization?

The authors are developing a set of concepts to make sense of a broad range of phenomena. They jump around from different examples (instances of biological citizenship)—how do they get from this multiplicity of instances to the more general type?

What is the hypothesis of biological citizenship about? That the concept of biology has changed. And this change in meaning has been taken up in all sorts of different ways. But what are these concepts (e.g., biovalue) doing? How do they help us better understand biological citizenship?

One way of assessing the work: for each example, how does “biology” operate and how does “citizenship” operate? Perhaps a concern about what gets left out is already internal to their argument: if the goal is to generalize from examples, then if there are examples that don’t fit the concept, then this should be concerning for them.

In what sense might this not take social critique seriously enough? (i) by the authors’ own lights, they should include a critical (non-descriptive) element, (ii) there is something about their argument that precludes or gets in the way of social critique?

What is the point of the section on political economies of hope?

How might we situate anti-vaxxers within this framework? What sense of objectivity are the authors working with here? Safe to assume a Foucauldian account of truth as historically produced.

Cohen, “Figuring Immunity” (2001)

 The group began as per usual with questions:

 

This essay is doing many different things, some more explicit and some more implicit.  A history of a metaphor of “immunity” and a problematization of the metaphor.  One set of problems concerns the biopolitical problematization that seems dominant in the paper.  Another, more implicit set of problems, concerns a kind of metaphysical form of critique with respect to how certain conceptions of biomedicine alienate the subject from their environment.

 

The politics involved in the medicine of epidemics (188-189).  How did epidemics become something like an obligation for the state?  And how later did the germ become a kind of political agent?  What makes it political is not just control but also that you need concepts and understandings of germs to function as new kinds of political justification.  There is a dual political aspect of epidemics, which is somewhat present in Foucault.  Intersection between politics, research, and germ as political agent.

 

This piece discusses Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic.  How is it mobilized and how does it fit in?  (See p. 182)

 

What is his theory of metaphor?  What’s at stake in “immunity” being a metaphor rather than something else?

Two methodological issues.  -- Shift around p. 193 from a more descriptive history or descriptive genealogy to a more of a judgment.  -- Methodological conceptualization of relation between Bernard and Pasteur (p. 190): “intellectual and technological conditions of possibility”.

 

 

 

Discussion began:

We discussed advantages and disadvantages of the concept of “metaphor” for the argument here.  Does the question of linguistic change/baggage require the idea of metaphor in contrast to truth?

We discussed what kinds of problematic assumptions the metaphor helped bring in.

We detected two forms of problematization in the piece.

-Problematizing the biopolitical effects of a certain form of medicine.

-There is a further problematization in the piece in a way that concerns the relationship between the subject and ‘the world’.

The former critique is focused on effects (e.g., political effects).  The latter is critical of the metaphor of “immunity” itself.

How do we weigh the competing benefits of, as it were, ‘getting the metaphysics right’ versus the benefits of the social consequences of what individualistic germ theory produced in terms of vaccination, eradication of smallpox, etc.?

How does this relate to Foucault’s discussion of how the environment reappears in medicine?

Does the author overplay the dichotomy between individualized medicine versus environmentalized medicine?

Rabinow, "Artificiality and Enlightenment" (1992)

 We began with questions:

P. 186, biosociality. – The sociality as new, as “truly new”. What makes it new & distinctive.

P. 186, biosociality – culture becoming natural – how do we understand this?

P. 185, new genetics – carrying its own promises – connect to 2 redefinitions of nature – how are dangers and promises of genetics connected to redefinitions

Biosociality – connections to identity, to risk, and to overcoming nat/cult – how do all of these fit together in one project or dispositif

Did the predictions in the piece bear out?

 

We then turned to discussion:

Discussion began with a connection to Foucault.

We considered the claim of Haraway’s (here quoted, p. 103 in the Essays on the Anthropology of Reason reprint) about “the death of the clinic”.

               Does genetics continue to individualize in the way that the clinic did?

               No, but it does individualize, but much more through a population.

Do organs and tissues disappear here?  Do they become possible traits for genetic detection?

Connection to genetics and medicine.  Why did genetics get so heavily incorporated into medicine?  Was medicine/health (the anatamo-clinical form) a kind of episteme into which genetics was delivered?

 What is biosociality?

Defined in opposition to sociobiology: an evolutionary explanation for the emergence of sociality (canonically E.O. Wilson).  [The dogging problem of this is melding the altruism and cooperation of sociality with the supposed selfishness of evolutionary theory.]  Rabinow: “modern social projects cast in biological metaphors.”

Biosociality as negative of sociobiology: trying to explain nature through the lens of culture.

How does nature become artificial?  How does it “finally” become artificial?

               Biology begins to implement a conception of changing biology.

               An assumption that genetics will open door to a new form of artificiality.

               Is the novelty of this at the level of the epistemological or the ontological?

Nature becomes what our social projects want to be.

At the same time, social becomes affiliated by, or around, the biological (e.g., chromose n, locus y, site z).

Birth of Clinic, Conclusion and Wrap-Up of book

 

We began by sharing passages from BoC we found:

 

Some passages focused on key methodological moments:

·        P. 137 – Distinction between savoir and connaissance

·        P. 137 – “A more general arrangement of knowledge” – multiplicity of elements in the conception of savoir here – to what extend does this anticipate dispositif?

·        P. xvii – Possibility of a structural anlaysis of discourse that “would evade… commentary” by attending only to “the fact of its historical appearance”.  Does Foucault live up to this methodology?  Where do we see him exhibiting it?  And where do we see him departing from it?  (Does he succeed in doing this on p. 184, for instance?)  What would be the criterion for knowing if this methodological commitment is adhered to or not?

·        P. xv – The configuration of a certain kind of experience becoming possible – Connection between lyrical experience and medical experience (in conclusion) – What kind of work is the category of experience doing for Foucault? – What work will it do later?

·        P.  118ff., 126 – Dealing with falsehoods and errors and myths in archival sources

·        P. xi – Beginning inquiry at the level of the pathological (as a common theme across Foucault’s work)

·        P. 70 (for one of many examples) - Use of the word “structure” and how this anticipates, relates to, or fails to do so, Foucault’s later genealogy.  Is there an inevitability or teleology to this structure in Foucault’s account?  How does (or could) he avoid that?  Whether he avoids it or not, what is its content?

 

Other passages focused on points in the history of medicine:

·        P. 108 – The role of observation and perception in Foucault’s account of the history of anatomo-clinical method.

·        P. 25 – History of epidemiology; and the role of “police” in supervising health regulations and unhealthy housing.  The clinic as a more expansive domain where it can involve (or include) public health.

·        P. 98 – Introduction of probabilistic thought into medicine; applicability of probability in medicine had to do with the position of the hospital field in relation to medical experience.

·        P. 84 – Distribution and mobilization and utilization of medical knowledge in distributing it across society (especially rich and poor later on the page).

·        P. 34 – The ideals of medicine involving “the positifive role of health, virtue, and happiness” and the role of happiness (in particular) as a value of medicine.

·        P. ? (ch. 9) – The relationship between death and visibility

 

We also shared a few questions from our reading of the conclusion:

·        What is the relationship between the human sciences, the human body, and the individual patient in anatomo-clinical method?

·        How is medicine important for the constitution of the human sciences?  How do we think about medicine’s privileged place here?

·        Foucault’s notion (which he attributes to Guardia) of how “health replaces salvation” – raises the question of the place of the secular in medicine

·        Relationship of framework of death & individuality in the conclusion – and specifically how does MF connect it to the history of medicine?

·        How much the conclusion anticipates moves and ideas and methods in later work – the visible/invisible (in HSv1; cf. passages on “the monogamous couple”), the subject/object (in OoT) – in this book medicine is given a large role in  the emergence of individuality in the place of the modern subject

 

Discussion ensued:

·        How is Foucault using “experience”?  Is he able to wrestle this notion out from the shadow of subjectivity?  What is the relation here between Foucault’s approach and the phenomenological approach of the subject?

o   On experience in Foucault see Oksala on Foucault and phenomenology and see also Kevin Thompson’s History & Theory essay.

o   What does “experience” without the “subject” pick out?  What gains do we get?

§  Does it pick out the archive?  The archive provides an experience that is tied to the archive itself.

§  Does “experience” serve as a general term and a very broad term?  One that enables him to bring in meanings and values?

§  It gives us, for instance, a route to a first-personal account of social contradictions in the way they are living – for instance, the experience of alienation in the way that people are living them.

§  Contrast MF on “experience” to Sartre and Merleau-Ponty; detachment from individuality.

·        To what extent, in this book, is medicine social medicine?  How well does Foucault capture the social and political dimensions of medicine?  Is the social/political dimension of medicine here missing?

·        What is the archaeological status of the “myths” that Foucault recounts throughout the book (e.g., p. 117ff.)?  Is Foucault saying that these myths truly are errors or myths?  Or is he saying that these myths are internal to these forms of knowledge?  If he is saying the former, then how does Foucault make use of these errors in narrating his histories?  These myths are part of the historical archive?  Foucault’s focus is on what people say in terms of what “systematizes” them from the outset (xix.)  For Foucault these myths are not just mistakes, but they are elements that do some work.  Methodologically, how did he arrive at that reading of these sources such that these are myths?  Perhaps myth for Foucault is a useful term for thinking about the story that medicine tells itself.

·        The importance of the role of medicine in the production of modern individuality and modern personhood.  Medicine’s central constructive role in the production of individuals who are embodied and living (196); and then in the production of finitude (197).