AC - Securitized Death

7/23/2019 AC - Securitized Death

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Securitized Death ACI affirm

Western metaphysics is wrong – there is no stable object or concept to beginmoral analysis with. assumiassumi! "rian. A #ser$s %uide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia& De'iations from Deleuze and %uattari. Cambridge! A& I(!

)**+.

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uze/and/%uattari.pdf

Saussure openly describes language as a reductive mechanism. ”language is a self-contained whole and a principle of classification.” What it classifies is the "confusing mass" of things we experience in the world, what he disdainfully calls the "heteroclite."

Language in its Saussurian functioning provides a unity ("whole" for that which by nature has no unity, and in relation to which u nity must always stand apart ("self!contained". he unity of language exists on a level of pure abstraction ("language is a form,

not a substance## at which there is only negative difference$ a sign is understandable only in opposition to what it is not. %&an” is

%not!Woman” %Woman” is %not!&an,” %'dult” is %not!hild” ) *one of these terms have

positive content. hey are empty categories forming an oppositional grid cleansed of the heteroclite. +or Saussure language is still

referential, if arbitrarily so. ' category conventionally designates a thing (the celebrated tree diagrams. n a -eleue!/uattarian framewor0, one would be tempted to reverse that formulation and say that bodies (as defined above$ as indeterminate energetic

matrixes are designed for the categories, and in the process are constituted as things (determinate. socially manipulable ob1ects 2 that language is prescriptive rather than referential. %t#s a boy3” -etermination. 4rescriptive e5uivalence. %We6ll ma0e a man

of him, even if it 0ills hi m”7 it is hereby ordained that the b ody before us shall, with all due haste, leave one order, the %heteroclite,” to 1oin another, deemed %difference.” 8ppositional difference. he body is negativized as the price of

it’s entry into an ocially recognized system of meaning. It gains %value” (both in the linguistic sense and in the sense of utility or prestige in the dominant cultural order), but loses , from

society's determining perspective, the particularity of its time and of its space; what is unreproducible in it. hese fall away in

favor of what it has in common with other similarly prescribed bodies membership in a class. 'n

e5uivalence is imposed between two orders that lifts a body out of its uni5ueness and places

it in a system of %difference” (%not that” in which it is reduced to the Same (one in a class of

%not that6s”. his process of linguistic perception (in our strong sense as a material grasping is identification (a body’s advent to

personhood through incorporeal transformation; in the !private! sphere, a body's negative di"erence. or social value, is calle d #personality!). dentification is arbitrary in the

sense that there is no %natural” connection between a body and its category, but necessary in

the sense that society nevertheless demands that the lin0 be made (on the basis of anatomy).$

This means that the only coherent ethical action is resistance

of repression through an armation of life to achieve thepossibility of value. Jun

Jun, Nathan. "Deleuze, Values, and Normativity." Deleuze and thics !#$$%& '()$#*. +eb.

%he process of creating value therefore re&uires an eternal revolution against the forces of

repression herever and hoever they arise. It lacs any ind of telos or end goal, since there is alays a micro

fascism luring at the heart of every system of personal valueconstruction hich can,

and often ill, reterritorialize and overcode that system . *gain, such a microfascism is every bit as instrumental in producing value as, say, the desire

for freedom. It is not the case, therefore, that e ought to oppose hat is antilife, but

rather that e must if e are to ever achieve value at all . %he fact that the discovery of value is alays provisional, tentative, and

contingent is hardly a reason not to pursue it. In the end, there may be no ultimate means by hich to distinguish

one ay of living from another, but it is precisely our inability to secure such a

means hich necessitates an ongoing commitment to ethical life.



ut death is not antithetical to life, it is an ongoing process in

-hich the physical death of an organism produces ne- formsof life. ttempts to securitize ourselves against the physical

death of a single organism are futile and life)denying / theymanage and striate the body to ma0imize utility and foreclosethe possibility of becoming through repression. 1olebroo2,

3arr and augh3arr, drian, and ruce augh. The Deleuze Dictionary. Ne- 4or2& 1olumbia 53, ##6. +eb.

7http&88ghiraldelli.pro.br8-p)content8uploads8The9Deleuze9Dictionary)$.pdf:.

+eath is many things a state of a"airs, hen a body’s parts, through eternal causes, enter into a

relation that is incompatible ith that body’s continued eistence ; an impersonal e vent of dying, epressed through

an in-nitive verb (mourir, to die); the eperience of zero intensity’ that is implicit in a body’s feeling or eperience of an inc rease or decrease in its force of eistence; a model’ of immobility and of energy that is not organised and

put to or; and -nally, the death instinct’, capitalism’s destruction of surplus value through ar, unemployment, famine and disease. * body eists hen its parts

compose a relation that epresses the singular force of eistence or essence’ of that body,

and ceases to be hen its parts are determined by outside causes to enter into a relation that is

incompatible ith its on. +eath in this sense alays comes from outside and as such is both

fortuitous and inevitable it is the necessary and determined result of a body’schance encounters ith other bodies, governed by purely mechanical las of cause

and e"ect. /ince every body interacts ith other bodies, it is inevitable that at some point it ill encounter bodies that decompose’ the vital relation of its parts, and cause those parts to e nter into ne relations,

characteristic of other bodies. +eath, as the decomposition of a body’s characteristic relation, forms

the basis of the personal and present death of the /elf or ego. %o this death, as founded in the personal self and the body, +eleuze

contraststhe event’ of dying, hich is impersonal and incorporeal, epressed in the in-nitive verb to die’ and in

the predicate mortal . +ying is not a process that taes place in things, nor is mortal’ a &uality that inheres in things or sub0ects. 1ather, the verb and the predicate epress

meanings that etend over the past and future , but hich are never physically present

in bodies and things, even though the death of a body e "ectuates or actualizes this dying. In impersonal dying, one’ dies, but one never ceases or -nishes dying. %he death

of the /elf or I’ is hen it ceases to die and is actually dead hen its vital relations

are decomposed, and its essence or poer of eistence is reduced to zero intensity .

2et, at this very instant, impersonal dying maes death lose itself in itself, as the decomposition ofone living body is simultaneously the composition of a ne singular life, the

subsumption of the dead body’s parts under a ne relation . +uring its eistence, bodies eperience increases or diminutions of

their poer or force of eisting. 3ther bodies can combine ith a body either in a ay that agrees ith the body’s constitutive relation, that results in an increase in the body’s poer felt as 0oy, or in a ay that is incompatible ith

that relation, resulting in a diminution of poer felt as sadness. 4oer is physical energy, a degree of intensity, so that every increase or decrease in poer is an increase or decrease in intensity. 5hen the body dies, and the /elf orthe ego ith it, they are returned to the zero intensity from hich eistence emerges. 6very transition from a greater to a lesser intensity, or from a lesser to a greater, involves and envelops the zero intensity ith respect to hich it

eperiences its poer as increasing or decreasing. +eath is thus felt in every feeling, eperienced in life and for life’. It is in that sense that the life instincts and appetites arise from the emptiness or zero intensity of death. %hemodel’ of zero intensity is thus the 7ody ithout 3rgans (73), the body that is not organized into organs ith speci-c functions performing speci-c tass, the energy of hich is not put to or, but is available for investment, hat

+eleuze calls death in its speculative form (taing speculative’ in the sense of -nancial speculation). /ince the 73 does not perform any labour, it is immobile and catatonic. In %he 8ogic of /ense, the catatonic 73 arises fromithin the depths of the instincts, as a death instinct, an emptiness disguised by every appetite. In *nti 3edipus, +eleuze retains his de-nition of the death instinct as deseualised energy available for investment, and as the source

of the destructiveness of drives and instincts, but argues that rather than a principle, the death instinct is a product of the socially determined relations of production in the capitalist system. +eath becomes an instinct, a di"used andimmanent function of the capitalist system 9 speci-cally, capitalism’s absorption of the surplus value it produces through antiproduction or the production of lac, such as ar, unemployment, and the selection of certain populations

for starvation and disease. %he death instinct is thus historical and political, not natural.

The +estern legal tradition has politicized the false dichotomy

of life death and has formed a vested interest in continued life,this is the politics of death control. ;ana<n;ana<n, 3atric2. "=ights of 3assage& >a- and the iopolitics of Dying." Deleuze and >a-& ?orensic

?igures !n.d.%& n. pag. +eb.7http&88---.academia.edu8@@@$(@8=ights9of9passage9la-9and9the9biopolitics9of9dying:.

%he liberal social compact is built on the desire to survive. In this schema man loos constantly ahead to the moment of his death

and his le gacy. %his becomes the be all and end all of life in the shado of death. Indeed it

becomes the foundation of the modern liberal order ith the creation of the social

contract as a means of survival, as a temporary immunity from death (see further :avarero, <<=, pp. =>9<?).

%he legal regulation of choosing ho one dies reveals that the individual’s poer to decide ho she lives or dies is ignored at best or curbed at orst. %he poer to decide is taen

from the individual in the name of an abstract notion of 8ife. %he terminally ill



person ho desires to die is prevented from doing so by legal obstacles. %his is part

of a ider management of individual lives or hat @ean 7audrillard has termed death control’. In this paradigm

hat e itness is a forced life for life’s sae’ A agony prolonged at all costsA

hether e eecute people or compel their survivalA the essential thing is that the

decision is ithdran from themA you shall not die’, not in any old ay, anyho (7audrillard, <<B, p. >C). I ant to loo at one le gal instantiation of this deathbound

normative narrative. %his eample, along ith many others hich have been decided in a similar ay, displays a tendency in the estern legal tradition to valorise true life, the disembodied life of pure and abstract thought over

mere incarnate life. 5ith the eception of a very small number of states (7elgium, the Detherlands, 3regon, /itzerland), the estern legal tradition does notcondone a right to die using active means, either in the form of voluntary

euthanasia or indeed physicianassisted suicide . 3n the other hand, many states allo an individual to mae hat is commonly called a li ving ill

or advance directive, hich permits the ithdraal of arti-cial feeding and hydration in the event that the person ever -nds herself or himself in a persistent vegetative state from hich there is no hope of recovery. %his model is

based on the :hristian ethical tradition hich distinguishes active from passive means of euthanasia. %he case I a nt to loo at in some detail is eemplary of the legacy of this normative model. %he Enited /tates’ /upreme :ourt’sad0udication in the 0ointly heard cases of 5ashington v Flucsberg and Guill v Hacco (= E./. >? (<<>)) came about as the result of decisions on the issue of physicianassisted suicide by the /econd and Dinth :ircuit :ourts of

*ppeal, hich gave constitutional protection to physician assisted suicide, one on the grounds of the right to privacy, the other on the grounds of e&ual treatment. %he /econd :ircuit :ourt

of *ppeal in Guill v Hacco (J? K.Bd >L (d :ir. <<L) held that the 6&ual 4rotection :lause of the

Kourteenth *mendment rendered statutes hich prohibit assisted suicide unlaful .

Doting that De 2or legislation permitted a competent person to refuse medical treatment even if this resulted in the individual’s death, the :ourt held that assisted suicide should also be permissible on the ground that lie persons

be treated alie. *n en banc panel of the Dinth :ircuit :ourt of *ppeal in :ompassion in +ying

v 5ashington (>< K.Bd ><? (<th :ir. <<L) (en banc)) held that the 5ashington state statute prohibiting a

physician from assisting a patient to die as unconstitutional, as it as contrary to the substantive component of the

Kourteenth *mendment’s +ue 4rocess :lause. 7oth cases ere consolidated for hearing by the /upreme :ourt in @anuary <<>. %he :hief @ustice delivered to

opinions for the :ourt in @une <<> overruling both the /econd and Dinth :ircuits’decisions. In these opinions he as 0oined by @ustices 3’:onnor, /calia, Mennedy,

and %homas . Noever, @ustice 3’:onnor -led a separate concurrence 0oined by @ustices Finsberg and 7reyer. In addition @ustices /tevens and /outer -led separate concurrences. 5hen reading the case one is

struc by the manner in hich the multiple voice s in the decision reOect the di"ering stances on life both as survival and possibility. %he /upreme :ourt ma0ority

opinion attempts to compose a narrative of order in the face of these unruly bodies

ho attempt to die before their time or out of time. %he narrative of the ma0ority

attempts to impose, order through 0udgment’ (Ehlmann, <<<, p. B<), hile the plainti"s see an alays e lusive 0ustice’ (Ehlmann, <<<, p. B<).

5ithin the 0udgment the la attempts to summon forth a living -gure and refuses to see the dying or dead -gures before it. %his calling forth of a living -gure in the face of death is even more pointed as the plainti"s had already

died by the time the /upreme :ourt 0ustices issued their opinions. :hief @ustice 1ehn&uist commences his observations in 5ashington v Flucsberg in defensive rhetorical mode and, in so doing, evinces the la’s failure to recognisethose ho ould ish to die otherise than in the legally sanctioned ay our las have consistently condemned, and continue to prohibit, assisting suicide. +espite changes in medical technology and notithstanding an increased

emphasis on the importance of end of life decisionmaing, e have not retreated from this prohibition. *gainst this bacdrop of history, tradition, and practice, e no turn to respondents’ constitutional claim (= E./. >? (<<>)

><). %he bacdrop or default is set. %he individual is bound by the rights’ hich also bind her to an

impersonal or statemediated death. 1ehn&uist speas in the rhetoric of arfare e have not retreated’. Ne goes on to construct a particular legal relation to assisted

death and in so doing reveals a ce rtain conception of community 5e no en&uire hether this asserted right has any place in our Dation’s traditions. NereA e are c onfronted ith a consistent and almost universal tradition that

has long re0ected the asserted right, and continues to re0ect it today, even for terminally ill, mentally competent adults. %o hold for respondents, e ould have to reverse centuries of legal doctrine and practice, a nd strie don theconsidered policy choice of almost every state (= E./. >? (<<>) >9B). In this passage, the :hief @ustice creates the illusion that there is a uniform vie on this contested ethical issue. %his, hoever, does not give due

consideration to the several contradictory vies and practices hich c oeist. Ne is interpreting the :onstitution in a manner hich ould give the appearance of unity. 1ehn&uist appeals to a particular interpretative method and, in

so doing, is hailing a particular totalizing conception of the nation. %he language of 1ehn&uist posits a particular societal model based on immunity and survival. In this case one could argue that hat is

valued most of all is a totalizing transcendent being in common of community.B %his relation is

built into the la’s normative frameor in the natural l a model of the sanctity of life. %his may help to eplain ho an inalienable right to

life is undone hen the body politic needs to defend itself or one of its citizens against

transgression. %his relation to death can be seen as looing to the enforcement of

la and eclusion of mere or embodied life . %he type of politics implicit in this approach involves discovering the implicit identity of a nation and setting it

to or. %his conception of politics as or relies upon and follos from the conception of community as immanent identity. 1ehn&uist creates the tetual illusion of a united homogeneous community. In his 0udgment he creates the

tetual boundaries hich enclose the citizen in the state. In this regard the la can be seen as a stabilising instrument, a means of suspending in abstract ghostly form identi-able citizens ho are simultaneously citizens ith an

identity. In other ordsthe tet of la creates or provoes a symbolic unity here none eists in

order to secure the state in its territorial and tetual space. %his illusory holeness

or togetherness is permanently under siege in the paranoiac discourse of the state

and of la . 1ehn&uist’s eclusion of physicianassisted suicide from the domain of rights might be eplained by his regarding such deaths as an instance of orlessness. Kor him such deaths add nothing to the

survival of his imagined community. %hey are pure ecess, deaths hich do not sublate into building community. In this model, ironically, state eecutions and illing in time of ar are approved of because they appear to uphold the

integrity of the community. %hey maintain societal solidarity, binding it together against the intruder. In the decision of the ma0ority in this case hat

is eclipsed is the actual choice facing the individual ho goes before the :ourt to

obtain recognition of his desire to die ith dignity. %his process is ell described by 5illiam :onnolly as the sedimentation of a n ethos into

corporeal sensibilities’ (:onnolly, <<<, p. ><). In this model the individual’s plea goes unheard .



The +estern stigmatization of death stems from the

valorization of utility, and dead bodies are considered to havenone, mar2ing them as the original e0cluded body. =obinson=obinson, ndre-. "Jean audrillard& The =ise of 1apitalism A the 0clusion of Death." 1ease<reBagazine. N.p., @# Bar. #$. +eb. 7https&88cease<remagazine.co.u28in)theory)baudrillard)8:.

/ymbolic echange 9 or rather, its suppression 9 plays a central role in the emergence of capitalism. 7audrillard sees a change happening over time. 1egimes based on symbolic echange (di"erences are echangeable andrelated) are replaced by regimes based on e&uivalence (everything is, or means, the same). :eremony gives ay to spectacle, immanence to transcendence. 7audrillard’s vie of capitalism is derived from Par’s analysis of value.7audrillard accepts Par’s vie that capitalism is based on a general e&uivalent. Poney is the general e&uivalent because it can be echanged for any commodity. In turn, it epresses the value of abstract labourtime. *bstract

labourtime is itself an e"ect of the regimenting of processes of life, so that di"erent inds of labour can be compared. :apitalism is derived from the autonomisation or separation of economics from the rest of life. It turnseconomics into the realityprinciple’. It is a ind of sorcery, connected in some ay to the disavoed symbolic level. It subtly shifts the social orld from an echange of death ith the 3ther to an eternal return of the /ame.

:apitalism functions by reducing everything to a regime based on value and the

production of value. %o be accepted by capital, something must contribute value.

%his creates an immense regime of social echange . Noever, this social echange has little in common ith symbolic echange. It

ultimately depends on the mar of value itself being unechangeable. :apital must be endlessly accumulated. /tates must not collapse. :apitalism thus introduces the irreversible into social life, by means of accumulation.

*ccording to 7audrillard, capitalism rests on an obsession ith the abolition of death. :apitalism

tries to abolish death through accumulation . It tries to ard o" ambivalence (associated ith death) through value (associated ith life). 7ut this is

bound to fail. Feneral e&uivalence 9 the basis of capitalism 9 is itself the everpresence of

death. %he more the system runs from death, the more it places everyone in

solitude, facing their on death. 8ife itself is fundamentally ambivalent. %he

attempt to abolish death through -ed value is itself deathly. *ccumulation also spreads to other -elds. %he idea of progress,

and linear time, comes from the accumulation of time, and of stocpiles of the past. %he idea of truth comes from the accumulation of scienti-c noledge. 7iology rests on the separation of living and nonliving. *ccording to7audrillard, such accumulations are no in crisis. Kor instance, the accumulation of the past is undermined, because historical ob0ects no have to be concealed to be preserved 9 otherise they ill be destroyed by ecessive

consumption. Halue is produced from the residue or remainder of an incomplete symbolic echange. %he repressed, maret value, and signvalue all come from this remainder. %o destroy the remainder ould be to destroy value.:apitalist echange is alays based on negotiation, even hen it is violent. %he symbolic order does not no this ind of e&uivalential echange or calculation. *nd capitalist etraction is alays oneay. It amounts to a non

reversible aggression in hich one act (of dominating or ill ing) cannot be returned by the other. It is also this regime hich produces scarcity 9 7audrillard here endorses /ahlins’ argument. :apitalism produces the Kreudian #deathdrive!, hich is actually an e"ect of the capitalist culture of death. Kor 7audrillard, the limit to both Par and Kreud is that they fail to theorise the separation of the domains they study 9 the economy and the unconscious. It is the

separation hich grounds their functioning, hich therefore only occurs under the regime of the code. 7audrillard also criticises theories of desire, including those of +eleuze, Koucault, Kreud and 8acan. Ne believes desire comes intoeistence based on repression. It is an e"ect of the denial of the symbolic. 8iberated energies alays leave a ne remainder; they do not escape the basis of the unconscious in the remainder. 7audrillard argues that indigenous

groups do not claim to live naturally or by their desires 9 they simply claim to live in societies. %his social life is an e"ect of the symbolic. 7audrillard therefore criticises the vie that human liberation can come about through theliberation of desire. Ne thins that such a liberation ill eep certain elements of the repression of desire active. 7audrillard argues that the processes hich operate collectively in indigenous groups are repressed into the

unconscious in metropolitan societies. %his leads to the autonomy of the psyche as a separate sphere. It is only after this repression has occurred that a politics of desire becomes conceivable. Ne professes broad agreement iththe +eleuzian pro0ect of unbinding energies from -ed categories and encouraging Oos and intensities. Noever, he is concerned that capitalism can recuperate such releases of e nergy, disconnecting them so they can eventually

reconnect to it. Enbinding and drifting are not fatal to capitalism, because capitalism itself unbinds things, and rebinds things hich are unbound. 5hat is fatal to it is, rather, reversibility. :apitalism continues to be haunted by theforces it has repressed. /eparation does not destroy the remainder. Guite the opposite. %he remainder continues to eist, and gains poer from its repression. %his turns the double or shado into something un&uiet, vampiric, and

threatening. It becomes an image of the forgotten dead. *nything hich reminds us of the repressed aspects ecluded from the sub0ect is eperienced as uncanny and threatening. It becomes the obscene’, hich is present inecess over the scene’ of hat is imagined. %his is di"erent from theories of lac, such as the 8acanian 1eal. 7audrillard’s remainder is an ecess rather than a lac. It is the carrier of the force of symbolic echange. Podern culture

dreams of radical di"erence. %he reason for this is that it eterminated radical di"erence by simulating it. %he energy of production, the unconscious, and signi-cation all in fact come from the repressed remainder. 3ur culture isdead from having broen the pact ith monstrosity, ith radical di"erence. %he 5est continues to perpetrate genocide on indigenous groups. 7ut for 7audrillard, it did the same thing to itself -rst 9 destroying its on indigenous

logics of symbolic echange. Indigenous groups have also increasingly lost the symbolic dimension, as modern forms of life have been imported or imposed. %his according to 7audrillard produces chronic confusion and instability.Fiftechange is radically subversive of the system. %his is not because it is rebellious. 7audrillard thins the system can survive defections or eodus. It is because it counterposes a di"erent principle of sociality’ to that of the

dominant system. *ccording to 7audrillard, the mediations of capitalism eist so that nobody has the opportunity to o"er a symbolic challenge or an irreversible gift. %hey eist to eep the symbolic at bay. %he a"ective charge ofdeath remains present among the oppressed, but not ith the properly symbolic rhythm’ of immediate retaliation. %he :hurch and /tate also eist based on the elimination of symbolic echange. 7audrillard is highly critical of

:hristianity for hat he taes to be a cult of su"ering, solitude and death. Ne sees the :hurch as central to the destruction of earlier forms of community based on symbolic echange. 7audrillard seems to thin that earlier forms ofthe state and capitalism retained some degree of symbolic echange, but in an alie nated, partially repressed form. Kor instance, the imaginary of the social contract’ as based on the idea of a sacri-ce 9 this time of liberty for thecommon good. In psychoanalysis, symbolic echange is displaced onto the relationship to the mastersigni-er. I haven’t seen 7audrillard say it directly, but the impression he gives is that this is a distorted, authoritarian imitation of

the original symbolic echange. Donetheless, it retains some of its intensity and energy. *rt, theatre and language have ored to maintain a minimum of c eremonial poer. It is the reason older orders did not su"er the particularmalaise of the present. It is easy to read certain passages in 7audrillard as if he is bemoaning the loss of these inds of strong signi-cations. %his is initially ho I read 7audrillard’s or. 7ut on closer inspection, this seems to be a

misreading. 7audrillard is nostalgic for repression only to the etent that the repressed continued to carry symbolic force as a referential. Ne is nostalgic for the return of symbolic echange, as an aspect of di"use, autonomous, dis

alienated social groups. +eath +eath plays a central role in 7audrillard’s theory, and is closely related to symbolic echange. *ccording to 7audrillard, hat e have lost above all

in the transition to alienated society is the ability to engage in echanges ithdeath . +eath should not be seen here in purely literal terms. 7audrillard speci-es early on that he does not mean an event a"ecting a body, but rather, a form hich destroys the determinacy of the sub0ect and of value 9

hich returns things to a state of indeterminacy. 7audrillard certainly discusses actual deaths, ristaing, suicide and so on. 7ut he also sees death -guratively, in relation to the decomposition of eisting relations, the #death! of

the selfimage or ego, the interchangeability of processes of life across di"erent categories. Kor instance, eroticism or seuality is related to death, because it leads to fusion and communication beteen bodies. /eual reproductioncarries shades of death because one generation replaces another. 7audrillard’s concept of death is thus &uite similar to 7ahtin’s concept of the grotes&ue. +eath refers to metamorphosis, reversibility, unepected mutations, social

change, sub0ective transformation, as ell as physical death. *ccording to 7audrillard, indigenous groups see death as social, not natural or biological. %hey see it as an e"ect of an adversarial ill, hich they must absorb. *nd theymar it ith feasting and rituals. %his is a ay of preventing death from becoming an e vent hich does not signify. /uch a nonsignifying event is absolute disorder from the standpoint of symbolic echange. Kor 7audrillard,

the est’s idea of a biological, material death is actually an idealist illusion, ignoring

the sociality of death. 4oststructuralists generally maintain that the problems of the present are rooted in the

splitting of life into binary oppositions. Kor 7audrillard, the division beteen life and death is the original, founding opposition on hich the others are founded.

*fter this -rst split, a hole series of others have been created, con-ning particular

groups 9 the #mad!, prisoners, children, the old, seual minorities, omen and so on 9 to particular segregated situations. %he de-nition of the normal

human’ has been narroed over time. %oday, nearly everyone belongs to one or

another mared or deviant category. %he original eclusion as of the dead 9 it is

de-ned as abnormal to be dead . #2ou livies hate us deadies!. %his -rst split and eclusion forms thebasis, or archetype, for all the other splits and eclusions 9 along lines of gender,

disability, species, class, and so on. %his discrimination against the dead brings into being the modern eperience of death. 7audrillard suggests that death as e no it

does not eist outside of this separation beteen living and dead. %he modern vie of death is constructed on the model of

the machine and the function. * machine either functions or it does not. %he

human body is treated as a machine hich similarly, either functions or does not . Kor

7audrillard, this misunderstands the nature of life and death. %he modern vie of death is also necessitated by the rise of sub0ectivity. %he sub0ect needs a beginning and an end, so a s to be reducible to the story it tells. %his

re&uires an idea of death as an end. It is counterposed to the immortality of social institutions. In relation to individuals, ideas of religious immortality is simply an ideological cover for the real eclusion of the dead. 7ut institutionstry to remain truly immortal. Podern systems, especially bureaucracies, no longer no ho to die 9 or ho to do anything but eep reproducing themselves. %he internalisation of the idea of the sub0ect or the soul alienates us from

our bodies, voices and so on. It creates a split, as /tirner ould say, beteen the category of man’ and the unman’, the real self irreducible to such categories. It also individualises people, by destroying their actual connections toothers. %he symbolic haunts the code as the threat of its on death. %he society of the code ors constantly to ard o" the danger of irruptions of the symbolic. %he mortal body is actually an e"ect of the split introduced by the

foreclosure of death. %he split never actually stops echanges across the categories. In the case of death, e still echange’ ith the dead through our on deaths and our aniety about death. 5e no longer have living, mortalrelationships ith ob0ects either. %hey are reduced to the instrumental. It is as if e have a transparent veil beteen us. /ymbolic echange is based on a game, ith gamelie rules. 5hen this disappears, las and the state are

http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm



https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-bakhtin-2/



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDsiv3D9Idg&t=8m26s







invented to tae their place. It is the process of ecluding, maring, or barring hich allos concentrated or transcendental poer to come into eistence. %hrough splits, people turn the other into their imaginary’. Kor

instance, esterners invest the #%hird 5orld! ith racist fantasies and revolutionary

aspirations; the #%hird 5orld! invests the est ith aspirational fantasies of

development. In separation, the other eists only as an imaginary ob0ect. 2et the

resultant purity is illusory. Kor 7audrillard, any such maring or barring of the other

brings the other to the core of society. #5e all! become dead, or mad, or prisoners,

and so on, through their eclusion. %he goal of survival’ is fundamental to the birth

of poer. /ocial control emerges hen the union of the living and the dead is shattered, and the dead become prohibited. %he social repression of death

grounds the repressive socialisation of life. 4eople are compelled to survive so as to

become usefu l. Kor 7audrillard, capitalism’s original relationship to death has historically been concealed by the system of production, and its ends. It only becomes fully visible no this system is

collapsing, and production is reduced to operation. In modern societies, death is made invisible, denied, and placed

outside society . Kor eample, elderly people are ecluded from society. 4eople no longer

epect their on death. *s a result, it becomes unintelligible. It eeps returning as nature hich ill not abide by

ob0ective las’. It can no longer be absorbed through ritual. 5estern society is arranged so death is never done by

someone else, but alays attributable to nature’. %his creates a bureaucratic,

0udicial regime of death, of hich the concentration camp is the ultimate symbol. %he

system no commands that e must not die 9 at least not in any old ay. 5e may only die if la and medicine allo it. Nence for instance the spread of health and safety regulations. 3n the other hand, murder and violence arelegalised, provided they can be reconverted into economic value. 7audrillard sees this as a regressive redistribution of death. It is rested from the circuit of social echanges and vested in centralised a gencies. Kor 7audrillard,

there is not a social improvement here. 4eople are e"ectively being illed, or left to die, by a process hich never treats them as having value. 3n the other hand, even hen capitalism becomes permissive, inclusive and tolerant, it

still creates an underlying aniety about being reduced to the status of an ob0ect or a marionette. %his appears as a constant fear of being manipulated. %he slave remains ithin the master’s dialectic for as long as his’ life or deathserves the reproduction of domination.

The <gure -ho demands the right to die is the ultimate

challenge to a legal order constructed around death controlCvote a to insert dysfunction into the fabric the la-. ;ana<n ;ana<n, 3atric2. "=ights of 3assage& >a- and the iopolitics of Dying." Deleuze and >a-& ?orensic

?igures !n.d.%& n. pag. +eb.

7http&88---.academia.edu8@@@$(@8=ights9of9passage9la-9and9the9biopolitics9of9dying:.

%he -gure ho refuses is a particularly troubling one for la. /uch a -gure engages in a

refusal to submit to the biopolitical order. 3ne such -gure is the terminally ill personho

states that they ould prefer not to live. %his gesture epresses hat Filles +eleuze has termed the mode of being as if already gone (7outang, <<=). %o be as if

already gone is to accept death and not allo it to become the limit of thining. %his is a living ith, or being ith death, hich sees it not as an intruder but as that ithout hich e cannot live. %hose ho have ehausted their end

see the right to die ith dignity. %his is a choice to die, hich allos the body to spea its end rather than have that end dictated by the voice of an epert, legal or medical. %he person ho sees to die is, to paraphrase Koucault,the 4assenger par ecellence that is, the prisoner of the passage’ (Koucault, <L>, p. ). %his notion of a passenger on the ay to death bespeas our eistence, prisoners of our being, passing toards death. 5hen an individual

goes before the la to claim this right not to live, 0udges, in a futile e"ort to put death on hold, tal, animatedly and ecitedly, about life. It is vital from the point of vie of

legal and political elites that the insubordinate citizen is seen to be managed. %he

ultimate threat to a legal order built on death control is the individual ho refuses to

accept la’s prohibition and sees to selfstyle her death . /he refuses to be styled by la’s speech. In self

styling one’s death one is choosing to arm one’s life and the desire not to live a

degraded eistence. %his act is lost on those blinded by a conservative morality hich opposes death to life. %his ma0oritarian politics of

survival or vita politics’ attempts to arrest death by composing a narrative hich

valorizes 8ife. In other ords,the state’s interest in preserving life becomes the interest in

preserving the life of the state. %he state attempts to put death to or in the

service of life. Noever, as 8ars Iyer reminds us, every attempt to put death to or is contested by dying itself, that is, by the #other! 8azarus ho refuses to rise and come toards us’ (Iyer, ??C, p. =B).

llo- the event of death to be a moment of becomingC

parado0ically, the right to die is the ultimate armation of lifeas decomposition and recomposition& life is not brac2eted by

EbirthE and EdeathE, but is a cycle of becoming. Fhildric2 Fhildric2 Bargrit GDeciding on Death& 1onventions and 1ontestations in the 1onte0t of DisabilityH

ioethical Inuiry !##'% 6&#(/$( DKI $#.$##L8s$$*L@)##L)(#LM)$



Py point is that all that has so far been discussed has positioned the debate ithin the con-nes of

conventional bioethics here it is taen for granted that individual life 9 even here it may diverge from the

human into other species 9 is a matter of overriding importance . 7ioethical &uestions concerning the value of life, and the implicit epectation that it ill be maintained,

often devolve on instances of technologically dependent life. 5ellnon and much debated, though unresolved, cases include those involving coma or persistent vegetative state, as ith *nthony 7land, and %erri /chiavo, both of

hom died after the apparent absence of a viable self 0usti-ed the cessation of all treatment, or the prolongation of life, as in the case of *ngela :arder, hose vital functions ere maintained 9 despite endstage cancer 9 to ensure

the sustainable, albeit unsuccessful, delivery of her foetus. %he term sanctity of life’ may not be overtly used, but in estern societies at least a nd those ith a history of monotheistic religions, Q7utRthe notion is usually present.

*nd hat underlies the humanist privileging of the individual capacity for self

determination is an all but unchallengeable belief that the supreme importance oflife resides primarily in its manifestation in each person. %he death, then, of any one

of us 9 but particularly those ho most eemplify the valued attributes of life 9 is an insult to life as such . I ant no to brea ith the usual parameters of bioethical

consideration here concepts such as the value of life are taen as given, and move instead to a radical recon-guration of hat might be meant by life as such. In place of the estern

predisposition to unproblematically attribute value to life as something held by

living individuals, hich is etinguished at their on deaths, might it be possible to rethin the parameters of

the debate in terms of a ider understanding of life as a nonpersonal vitalist force

that eceeds the uni&ue interests of each individual QB?R. I am not suggesting a turn to spiritualist ideology here of hatever form, but rather

9 as 7raidotti does 9 an eploration of +eleuze’s philosophy of becoming otherSimperceptible QBR in hich the di"erential being’ of any sub0ect is alays in a process of unravelling through an acnoledgment of the multiple ebsof connections that constitute becoming. In place of a predetermined and relatively unchanging sub0ect as the lifetime holder of rights, life is not de-ned by an essential form or by the booends of birth and death, and neither isindividual eistence the centre of ethical concern. %he purpose is not to o"er a scholarly reading of +eleuze’s understanding of life and death, but to push the stalled bioethical debate onto ground hose very unfamiliarity may

provoe reneed movement. In a telling reversal of the more familiar use of the term, 7raidotti QB?R proposes zoe to delineate the sense of life as something that far eceeds any particular instances of it, thus challenging the implicitvalue distinction made by *gamben QBR. *s used by *gamben, the concept of zoe is mared as #bare life! stripped of all that bestos value on the individual, hile its counterpart bios delineates personal life, socially and politically

contetualised. :ertainly *gamben deplores the modern separation of the to elements, for the second cannot eist ithout the -rst, but he nonetheless clearly privileges bios. In a recent paper, @ames 3verboe QBBR claims that,according to *gamben’s schema, bare life is eempli-ed by the disabled body, hich thus occupies a #state of eception!, a condition of being ecluded from the polity and deprived of rights. *lthough 3verboe is primarily concerned

ith beginning of life decisions that see to eliminate genetic abnormality, he concurs ith 7raidotti in identifying liberal individualisation as a ma0or force in delineating 0ust ho normative life is valued, and sees alternative aysforard in the or of +eleuze. 5hat is very di"erent, hoever, is that, unlie 7raidotti (or +eleuze as I shall argue), 3verboe remains concerned ith the individual, re0ecting the notion of the self only insofar as it #is territorialized

by the concomitant of ablebodiedness! (QBBR, p. B?). 5hat he calls for is a rearmation of bare life as simply a variant epression to be valued in its on right, and in speaing of his personal condition, he rites of #thevivaciousness of cerebral palsy as a life arming force! (QBBR, p. ). I believe this is an etraordinarily valuable approach, but I ant to go further in problematising liberal humanism, and in reriting zoe, not as bare life reclaimed

to personal, social and political meaning, but as an alternative ay of thining about the signi-cance of the -nite life course of individual eistence. In its original Free

manifestation, zoe indicated hat as indestructible, eternal, and it is in that sense

that it both contests individual epression and moves aay from the negativity

implied by bare life . 5hen +eleuze insists on the rhizomatic nature of life 9 by hich he means its proliferation in everne forms along multiple and unpredictable pathays 9 he decisively breas

ith the notion of an atomistic sub0ect, and signals a state of becoming in hich the ill to live is a prepersonal and nonorganic poer that goes beyond any individual lived eperience. If life for +eleuze is

mared by potentiality, by connection and the processes of transformation, ho are

e to understand death, and indeed his on death by suicideT %he starting point is

to recognise that in +eleuzian terms, life in the broad sense is a continuing pro0ect, not a discrete

essence bounded at the beginning and end by noneistence. It is #a plane of

immanence! (QBCR, p. LJ), a nontemporal and unstructured locus of coalescence of creative

forces , and although it is continually actualised in the individual body, human and otherise, that can represent personal value, those bodies are simply part ofthe cycle of becoming. In the same ay, although the course of human life is mared by discrete events here things happen, in another sense, events are also incorporeal forces and

intensities, hat +eleuze calls #singularities!, that have no anchorage in time. *s such, the death of a human being mars both the

moment of -nal dissolution of a single eistence, and the point at hich the

individual actualisation of life moves bac into the impersonality of hat 7raidotti

understands as zoe #It’s organisms that die, not life! (Q>R, p. CB). :ertainly, my death signals the decomposition of my bodily relations and the cessation of my self or ego, but it is not the absolute

closure that liberal humanism anticipates. *lthough the being represented as I is reduced to hat +eleuze ould call zero intensity, the event of dying is a further opening, another moment of becoming. *s +eleuze puts it 5ithevery event, there is indeed the present moment of its actualisation...the moment e designate by saying #here, the moment has come!A.7ut on the other hand, there is a future and past of the event considered in itself...beingfree

of the limitations of a state of a"airs, impersonal and preindividualA.+eath has an etreme and de-nite relation to me and my body and is grounded in me, but it also has no relation to me at all 9 it is incorporeal and in-nitive,

impersonal, grounded only in itself. (QB=R, p. =) In other ords, individual onership’ of life and death is subsumed in the

intensity of the irreducible and dynamic force of becoming that has no beginning or

end. In that sense, the individual instance of dying continues to celebrate the Ou

and Oo of life, and death itself is negated. In terms of personal eistence, hat matters is that the

poer to arm life 9 both in its uncontested moments of 0oy and in its endurance 9 should remain strong. %his speas not to the strategy

of transcendence as a ay of overcoming bodily disarray 9 and in any case +eleuze as uninterested in functional ecacy as such 9 but to hat 7raidotti has called #sustainability ! (QB?R, p. <), the

capacity to enhance one’s potentials through pleasure and pain alie . It is signi-cant that 7raidotti rites

elo&uently of alcoholism and drugtaing in this contet, for it belies any easy recourse to choosing death simply because personal life fails to follo a comfortable and normative course. *lthough never

fully selfdetermining in the liberal humanist sense, the +eleuzian sub0ect must

strive to become #the &uasicause! of hat is produced ithin the individual life;

she must ill the event 9 as both misfortune and splendour 9 as her on . 6vents, says +eleuze, invite us

in and signal that #(m)y ound eisted before me, I as born to embody it! (QB=R, p. CJ). %he tas of the individual, then, is to embrace



ithout ressentiment all that occurs, a disposition that +eleuze approvingly relates

to the /toic ethic #6ither ethics maes no sense at all, or this is hat it means and

has nothing else to say not to be unorthy of hat happens to us! (QB=R, p. C<). %he good life is one that

overOos and transforms itself in the face of adversity, alays opening up ne possibilities of becoming other than itself. *nd for +eleuze, lie 7raidotti, hat a body can tae far eceeds normative epectations.

Donetheless, the corollary of such an understanding is that life may be armed not

only through personal living, but precisely through the selfsuppression of an

individual eistence that blocs the epression of 0oyous endurance. If one believesthat the decomposition of the individual life, the event of dying, is simultaneously

the recomposition of life under ne relations of sustainability, then suicide and

euthanasia need no longer be ethical or social failures . 5e may still onder hether in the face of rapidly failing health any one of us

might have chosen to arm life through our on persons for longer than +eleuze did, but e cannot reasonably claim that his suicide is to be deplored. 1ather, e can see it as a -nal

epression of the positivity of life and the point at hich the selfcentred eistence

illingly becomes other than itself. In +eleuzian terms, the event 9 real and painful though it is as a moment in time 9

speas clearly to the intimation that I am not the oner of life, but merely one

strand of its multiple and indestructible becomings.

Traditional education homogenizes students and churn them

out to be productive and unuestioning laborers. The role ofthe udge should be as an educator facilitating nomadic andrhizomatic learning to encourage Ouidity, multiplicity, andpossiblility. =eilly=eilly, Bary nn. "et-een the y)=oad and the Bain =oad." & +e re 3ando& =hizomatic >earningP.

N.p., L Fept. #$$. +eb. 7http&88maryannreilly.blogspot.com8#$$8#(8-e)are)pando)rhizomatic)

learning.html:.

Kor more than a decade, I have been considering ho the rhizome might function as metaphor and model for education. %he traditional vie of education

situates schooling as a function of transference of epertdetermined content from

teacher to student . E./. school systems tend to rely on hierarchy as the privileged school organization method used to distribute content and pedagogical practices, most often in the form of

sanctioned programs developed by eternal eperts and then purchased for teachers ho are told to transfer the content to students. In contrast a rhizomatic learning

community is a Ouid collective here participants dell in the middle of things and

here learning emerges informed by a blend of eplicit and tacit noledge . In conceiving of

rhizomatic learning, it helps to thin of learners resembling a sea of $middles,! ho are continuously formed and reformed based on alliances determined by needs, interests, directions, &uestions, redirections, assessments, andcommitments. Enlie the design of many traditional schools, a rhizomatic learning space is based on 0oining and re0oining. In rhizomatic learning, thining resembles the tangle of roots and shoots, both broen and hole. 4roblem

framing and decisionmaing rest ith all learners. *gain, +riscoll’s description of rhizomatic learning is important. /he rites 7rea the rhizome anyhere and the only e"ect is that ne c onnections ill be gron. %he rhizome

models the unlimited potential for noledge construction, because it has no -ed pointsAand no particular organization (p. BJ<). Nistorically,hen confronted ith student

achievement concerns, there has been a tendency to tighten control in an e"ort to

increase learning largely because hat has counted as noing has been limited to

a perceived set’ body of content . +oug %homas and @ohn /eely 7ron (?) describe this learning Aas a series of

steps to be mastered, as if students ere being taught ho to operate a machine or even, in some cases, as if the students themselves ere

machines being programmed to accomplish tass. %he ultimate endpoint of a

mechanistic perspective is eciency the goal is to learn as much as you can, as

fast as you can (%homas U 7ron, 8ocation B> of B<<). In this mistaen schema, noledge has been

consistently situated as stableVas that hich can be listed in a set of standards and

given to teachers to transfer. 7ut e no that noledge is not stable (/chon, <JB; %homas U 7ron,

?). %homas and 7ron state, $QmRaing noledge stable in a changing orld is an uninnable game! (8ocation =?B of B<<). Mnoledge actually has never been stable, but given the disruptive poer of the Internet, hat

counts as noledge is a shifting matter that is more easily recognized, especially by those holding poer hose concept of noing in the past as often situated as truth. 3ne only has to thin of the Freat :hain of 7eing tounderstand ho the sanctity of noing as often a matter of poer. In contrast to such certainty, %homas and 7ron posit that there is a ne culture of learning informed by a massive information netor that provides almost

unlimited access and resources to learn about anythingAQandR a bounded and structured environment that allos for unlimited agency to build and eperiment ith things ithin these boundaries (8ocation LB of B<<). %his ne

culture of learning is inherently rhizomatic as it orients itself horizontally, not vertically, re&uiring us to value tacit noledge. %acit noledgenoing more than

one can tellre&uires a decidedly di"erent type of learning environment than hat

is currently favored at school here noledge transfer is the privileged method.

%acit noledge is not ac&uired from other; it re&uires learning through mind, body

and senses and is facilitated by eperimentation and in&uiry.

Documents

AC - Securitized Death