Modern medical structures are biopolitical tools that individualize responsibilities instead of collectivizing solutions

Eva, phD candidate at the University of Sussex. “Intellectual Property and the Genetic Dispositif of Life: The Changing Role of Intellectual Property Law in Governing Participation and Knowledge in the Bioeconomy.” Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Sussex, May 2015. Pp 134-136. LJS

Analyses of governmentality look at the constitution of the subject as a part of the reproduction of relations of power. This raises questions about the relation between norms for the conduct of the individual and the subject’s freedom of action within governmentality. Rose, O’Malley & Valverde draw attention to the particular connection between “techniques of the self”, freedom, and forms of governmentality: “[...] technologies of the self were formed alongside the technologies of domination such as discipline. The subjects so created would produce the ends of government by fulfilling themselves rather than being merely obedient, and in Rose’s phrase (Rose 1989) would be obliged to be free in specific ways.” (N. Rose, O’Malley, and Valverde 2006, 89) This highlights the way in which the ‘fulfillment’ of the self becomes conducive to the maintenance of governmental goals, incited by processes that “govern at a distance” (Miller and Rose 1992) through “regulated self-responsibility” (McNay 2009, 62).64 As Foucault points out, the analysis of governmentality is fundamentally concerned with “the way in which one conducts the conduct of men” (Foucault 2008, 186) – showing how power is exercised in order to produce subjects that are “open and amenable to governmental interventions and techniques” (Odysseos 2011, 445). The economic subject, homo oeconomicus, constitutes “the interface of government and the individual” in governmentality (Foucault 2008, 253), and is an “entrepreneur of himself, being for himself his own capital, being for himself his own producer, being for himself the source of [his] earnings” (Ibid., 226). This individualisation of the subject and the transfer of responsibility to this individual for conducting itself in a responsible, approved (or ‘normal’) manner is a marker of a specifically neoliberal form of governmentality, as McNay points out. The transfer of responsibility to the individual gives rise to the notion of the “self as enterprise” (McNay 2009). Foucault points out that, besides participation in the economy, governing increasingly takes the health and well-being of the population as its aim, and the conduct of conduct on the level of populations is increasingly fostered and directed accordingly (in the “population-biological processes-regulatory mechanisms-State” series of “biopolitics”, Foucault 1997, 250; see also Foucault 1978, 139). In this conduct, “maintenance of the healthy body became central to the self management of many individuals and families” (N. Rose 2007a, 4). Responsible patients were “[e]ncouraged by health educators to take an active interest in their own health, and ‘activated’ by the new cultures of active citizenship, many refused to remain merely ‘passive’ recipients of medical expertise. ‘Patients’ became ‘consumers’ actively choosing, and using medicine, biosciences, pharmaceuticals and ‘alternative medicine’ in order [sic] maximize and enhance their own vitality, demanding information from their doctors, expecting successful therapies, and liable to complain or even go to law if they are disappointed.” (Ibid., 11) This process is not one of unidirectional domination, but rather a diffuse exercise of power that has the potential to sustain and also to challenge existing regimes. Within governmental networks, Miller and Rose point out that “[e]ach actor, each locale, is the point of intersection between forces, and hence a point of potential resistance to any one way of thinking and acting, or a point of organization and promulgation of a different or oppositional programme” (N. Rose and Miller 2010, 208, first published 1992). While the exercise of power makes individuals into subjects, this does not necessarily imply a top-down imposition of a normalising strategy on the individual by the state: “biopower […] [was] consentingly invoked by many social groups […]. The health of all […] became a priority of all” (Elbe 2005, 407). Normalising power is thus exercised by various actors, including the individual or “active” citizen, and always contains the potential for a subversion of existing power relations. But the power of active patients to challenge healthcare provisions in order to enhance their vitality is also accompanied by emerging responsibilities. Rose argues that the conduct of “active patients” is conducted by a “new somatic ethics” governing the political sphere of life and health, which shares an “elective affinity” with the bioeconomy (N. Rose 2007a; 2008a). The previous chapter of this thesis argued that the operation of this elective affinity could be traced in IP’s production of truth discourses of ‘life’, which normalised the informational-genetic view of life (the genetic dispositif) at the expense of other more complex accounts of ‘life’. This informational-genetic conception combines knowledge of the individual and the population in one code, which enables the integration of this information into the bioeconomy. This chapter argues that this genetic dispositif influences the formation of identities, conducting the conduct of subjects according to genetic ‘truths’ in a new somatic ethics, which also transfers healthcare responsibilities onto the subject. The increasing integration of genetic information into the bioeconomy further intensifies the exposure of the subject to this truth – thus amplifying the tensions between exclusive IPRs and new rights and responsibilities of ‘active patients’. Before this chapter turns to an exploration of IP’s role in the maintenance of the division between patent holders and patients/donors, the next section sets out new rights and responsibilities affecting the conduct of “active patients” in a “new somatic ethics”.