Deviance or Homo sacer? Foucault, Agamben and Foetal Diagnostics

Abstract

This article compares the perspectives of Foucault and Agamben on biopolitics. The dichotomy normality/deviance is central to Foucault's analyses of modern subjectivities, while the Sovereign/Homo sacer dichotomy has a similar position according to Agamben. Are modern subjectivities shaped by a disciplining power, operating through some rather stable and fixed standards and norms, or are they exposed to continuously defined states of exceptions, in which the moral and social order are declared irrelevant and not valid? Agamben states that in modernity the distinction between the normal and the exception is fundamentally blurred, and therefore the normal human condition is to be held hostage to a sovereignty making pure, immanent decisions without any references to stable, recognizable criteria. Are we therefore inscribed into normality, producing ourselves in a machinic way, or are we exposed to complete uncertainty, stripping our social existence down to bare human life or the status of Homo sacer?There is striking flexibility and plasticity in defining human deviance Á/ not only from the perspective of the last century, but from that of the last ten years. This is far from trivial, both for the individuals who are placed within the historical floating categories and for society; there is much at stake. The expertise operates directly on human bodies by conferring or removing value, and cuts into psychologies by categorizing existential conditions such as deviance. This means that they no longer have something important or privileged to tell us, but become defect misunderstandings. At the same time professional gazes become fundamentally unpredictable because of their shifting and roaming character. We do not know how or what they will see next year Á/ what categories that will spring up, their scope or how they will be practised. This leads to a common feeling of being exposed. Who will be captured next time, in what way and by what consequences? Nobody is in a position to answer these questions. When the borderline between normality and deviance is continually redrawn and with new dimensions, nobody can be assured of remaining on the right side of it. Instead we become nascent and vulnerable.

“If they can't tell the difference between duphalac and digoxin you've got patient safety issues“. Nurse Lecturers' constructions of students' dyslexic identities in nurse education

“…The nurse educator is 'Sovereign', placing students with 'severe' dyslexia within a zone of indistinction, representing a state of exception. As Sirnes (2005) points out, the description by Agamben of sending people to camp "means sending them outside ordinary law" (p. 209). In other words equality and anti-discriminatory law is ignored.…”

“…Agamben (1998) draws on a figure of Roman law homo sacer, a "non-person, beyond the protection of law or even of worth as a sacrificial victim" (Georges, 2008, p. 9). His fate has been decided by others or as Sirnes (2005) describes "For the Sovereign all humans are potentially Homo sacer and faced with Homo sacer everybody may act as a Sovereign" (p. 212). Reeve (2009) describes this figure as a 'shadowy figure' an "invaluable metaphor for the impaired figure" (p. 205).…”

Problembarn og profesjoner – krigsbarn som sosial kategori i norsk etterkrigstid

“…Når krigsbarnsaken trekkes fram i de siste årene, er det mange som undres over hvorfor behandlingen av krigsbarna og mødrene deres ikke tidligere har vaert en del av norsk krigsog etterkrigshistorie. 2 Også dette fenomenet belyser noe allment, nemlig de stadig skiftende faglige diagnosebildene og sosialpolitiske problemkategoriene, eller det historisk sett "flakkende og ustadige" faglige blikket på kategorier av avvik som Thorvald Sirnes kaller det (Sirnes 2005). Jan Froestad skriver på sin side om "vilkårligheten i den sosiale konstruksjonen av handikap" (Froestad 1995:14).…”

“…Og ikke minst: hvor langt var man villig til å gå i forebyggingens navn og skille krigsbarna fra mødrene deres? Thorvald Sirnes skriver om det sakkyndige blikket som flakkende og ustadig, og kategoriene for avvik som historisk sett flyktige (Sirnes 2005). Det er dette blikket og de skiftende kategoriene som har vaert vårt tema i forskningen omkring krigsbarns oppvekstvilkår.…”

“…Artikkelen er basert på forskningsprosjektet Oppvekstvilkår for krigsbarna(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004). Prosjektet inngikk i Velferdsprogrammet i Norges forskningsråd og har vaert forankret ved Universitetet i Oslo(Borgersrud 2002, Ellingsen 2004, Simonsen og Ericsson 2004, Ericsson og Simonsen 2005a, 2005.…”