Wednesday, March 30, 2005
(9:18 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
The State of Exception and Terry Schiavo
Mark Kaplan points us to an article by Eric Santner on "Terri Schiavo and the State of Exception." It also deals at great length with the "detainees" in the so-called "war on terror." In the light of recent discussions here and elsewhere about the Schiavo case and the real thought process behind the pro-life movement, I pick out this one paragraph from an article that is worth reading in its entirety:Of course, the Terri Schiavo case would never have entered the national awareness were it not for certain Christian groups that adopted it as a battleground in the larger cause of defending so-called innocent life. There is much to say about this phrase, “innocent life.” Given the fact that many who oppose abortion also condone capital punishment, one has good reason to wonder whether what is really at stake here is not innocent life but rather living innocence, that is, a fantasy of protecting not a human life but a condition of purity and innocence that can, in turn, only be truly embodied by non-sentient life. Indeed, one cannot help but wonder whether what President Bush has referred to as the “culture of life” only refers to non-sentient life; as soon as one acquires feeling, perception, and awareness one is more or less abandoned to the minimally regulated vagaries of the market place.This takes us much further, in my opinion, than the cliched argument about how pro-life people need to be pro-all-life -- we have all always known that it was never about that, really, and therefore we knew that our little argument wouldn't work. It would, however, reinforce our feeling of self-righteousness, which can be important.
(On an unrelated note, I find that the real satisfaction of reading General J. C. Christian, Patriot, is in the titles. For instance, today: The most misunderstood scouting tradition. It just wasn't worth a new post to say it.)
