The Death of Others. On the Narrative Rhetoric of Neoliberal Thanatopolitics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21617896 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Grue (0000-0002-3786-9768, University of Oslo, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2022-08-18 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Disability Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1041-5718 • E-ISSN: 2159-8371 |
| Publisher | The Ohio State University Libraries (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.18061/dsq.v42i1.7799 |
| OpenAlex | W4293068261 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 20 |
Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) are deeply controversial topics both within and beyond disability studies, involving issues of structural ableism, discrimination, and the right to self-determination. A common defence of the legalization of PAS, as distinct from euthanasia, rests on the right of an individual to freely choose when to end one's life. This essay makes an intervention in this debate by examining the rhetoric of media and cultural narratives that directly and indirectly address the issue of PAS and autonomous choice. Considering these narratives from a biopolitical point of view, I argue that contemporary thanatopolitical narratives draw on a particular rhetorical mode, known as "parrhesiastic rhetoric" or anti-rhetoric. This mode helps frame the testimony of extremely vulnerable individuals as a supremely credible argument in favor of the legalization of PAS. Moreover, it engenders sympathy rather than identification with these narrative subjects, ensuring that the death that is being justified remains at a distance from the reader, safely positioned as the death of others. I further argue that this narrative rhetoric supports a particular, neoliberal conception of autonomy, in which individual subjects are dynamic, rational and self-directing. In neoliberal thanatos political discourse, the choice to die is seen as fundamentally an outcome of individual, informed decision-making. Against this atomistic framework, I deploy the analyses of biopolitical disability studies to contribute to a better understanding of the historical, socio-economic, cultural, and rhetorical forces that shape contemporary debates over euthanasia and PAS
Ableism · Aesthetics · Art · Autonomy · Legalization · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Precarity · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Sympathy · Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality Studies · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Gender Studies · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Psychology · Social Psychology
Language, Power and Ideology
Attitudes and Practices of Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide in the United States, Canada, and Europe
The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA)
The Nazi Doctors
Birth of the Suicidal Subject
Biopolitics in the Political Thought of Classical Greece
A Historical Sociology of Disability
Foucault and the Government of Disability
Self-Determination, the Right to Die, and Culture
Beyond the Sociology of Diagnosis
What the Nazi "Euthanasia Program" Can Tell Us About Disability Oppression
Dis/ability and austerity
Foucault’s and Arendt’s ‘insider view’ of biopolitics
Dead people don’t claim’
Suicidal thoughts
Negative governance
The question of access
Thanatopolitics
Biopolitics, Thanatopolitics and the Right to Life
Putting a Name to it
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |