Death by Choice, Life by Privilege: Biopolitical Circuits of Vitality and Debility in the Times of Empire
2015
Abstract
This chapter constitutes an inquiry into phantasies of spectacular solutions to biological precarity experienced in the Global North and that are based upon (racialised, classed and ableist) promises of autonomy, choice, freedom, and essentially the phantasm of the subject's sovereignty. In order to motivate this inquiry, I revisit the debates around end-of-life decision-making and assisted dying.
I then contextualise these debates within the broader geo-political context of Empire and specifically in relation to "outsourcing" the elderly and 'debilitated' of the North into the global South, where they are provided care.