Death, Power, and the Body: A Bio-political Analysis of Death and Dying

Abstract

According to Michel Foucault, life has become the focus of an infinite amount of both micro and macro management strategies, the point of which being to optimize health and to prolong life. Foucault labeled such strategies as " bio-power." While bio-power exists on many levels of society, my focus has been on certain medical technologies that have helped to expose the political nature of death by calling into question the time of death and who decides it. As the line between life and death has become more and more indistinct, Giorgio Agamben has argued that bio-politics turns into "thanatopolitics" — a politics of death. As Agamben argues, death is not a biological moment but a political decision. In this study I will focus specifically on reconsidering the relations of power surrounding the decision to stop preserving life in the particular space of the hospital room. I will then attempt to consider how our exposure to death in this space of power might be resisted using both the insights of Foucault and Agamben.