-
Voicing Terri Schiavo: ProsopopeicCitizenship in the Democratic
Aporiabetween Sovereignty and BiopowerMegan Foley
This essay examines the case of Terri Schiavo to develop a
theory of prosopopeic
democratic citizenship. Prosopopeia*the tropological attribution
of voice*rhetoricallysutures an aporia between sovereign and
biopolitical modes of democratic governance.
Citizens are split by the democratic rationality of
self-governance: they act as sovereign
subjects to govern themselves as biopolitical objects. However,
that self-governing logic
begins to falter when applied to live bodies that are not
speaking subjects. By projecting a
live bodys self-determining capacity to speak in its own voice,
prosopopeia rhetorically
reconstitutes that citizens capacity for self-representation,
mediating the gap in the
democratic order.
Keywords: Democracy; Voice; Citizenship; Biopower;
Prosopopeia
While the voice has long been a commonplace in democratic
rhetorics of rights, in
recent years the role of voice in American citizenship has been
inverted. US rhetorics
of rights-claiming have traditionally aimed to extend equal
voice to subjects who
were excluded from full citizenship, such as women and people of
color. However,
increasingly, rhetorics of rights have turned that democratizing
formula inside out.
Even as many speaking subjects continue to be disenfranchised as
citizens, rights-
claiming rhetorics have begun to grant citizenship to bodies
that are not speaking
subjects.
In the wake of the US civil rights and second-wave feminist
movements, calls to
secure rights for a broad spectrum of non-speaking, living
bodies have proliferated:
for example, animal rights, environmental rights, fetal rights,
and the rights of
Megan Foley is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
at Mississippi State University. The author
wishes to thank Barbara Biesecker, David Hingstman, Paul
Johnson, Michael Lawrence, Jason Regnier, Nathan
Stormer, and the CCCS editorial team for their insightful
comments on various drafts of this essay. The author is
also grateful for helpful feedback from the audience at the 2008
National Communication Association
Convention. Correspondence to: 130 McComas Hall, Mail Stop 9574,
PO Box PF, Mississippi State, MS 39762,
USA. E-mail: [email protected]
ISSN 1479-1420 (print)/ISSN 1479-4233 (online) # 2010 National
Communication AssociationDOI: 10.1080/14791420.2010.523433
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
Vol. 7, No. 4, December 2010, pp. 381400
-
incapacitated patients.1 While the political status of these
different bodies varies
considerably, the rhetorical strategies that constitute them as
rights-holding citizens
are remarkably similar. As Jason Edward Black has shown,
homologous rhetorics
invest these non-speaking beings with rights by asserting the
personhood of their
living bodies and attributing voice to those bodies.2 These
maneuvers assert the rights
of speechless forms of life by appropriating the trope of giving
voice from feminist
and anti-racist rhetorics of rights.3
Traditionally, giving, claiming, or having voice has served as a
metaphor for
political agency.4 Voice functions as a rhetorical condensation
point for a cluster of
democratic values, such as inclusion, participation, and
equality.5 As a political trope,
voice links these ideals of democratic representation with
citizens capacity for
symbolic self-representation. However, that link between
political and symbolic
modes of representation is broken when the trope of voice is
applied to bodies that
are materially incapable of representing themselves through
speech. These speechless
citizens demonstrate that voice is more than a political
metaphor: voice also
denotes an embodied performance, a bodily and organic action, as
Eric King Watts
explains.6 As more and more mute bodies acquire rights, it
becomes increasingly
important to consider the place of the living body in the logics
of self-representation
that constitute democratic citizenship.
An exemplary limit-case for examining the changing role of the
embodied voice in
American citizenship*and the problems it creates for democratic
governance*is theTerri Schiavo controversy. On October 15, 2003,
the New York Times introduced the
nation to this voiceless citizen: Ever since Terri Schiavos
heart temporarily stopped
beating one winter night in 1990, leaving her severely brain
damaged, she has been a
woman without a voice.7 Schiavos missing voice quickly became
the platform for a
high-volume public outcry. In response to the court-ordered
removal of Schiavos
feeding and hydration tubes, ABCs Word News Tonight reported,
There is a growing
crescendo of concern across the country, and people have
responded in massive
numbers.8 As this crescendo reached its height, American
citizens attached to
Schiavos voiceless body as a site of collective investment. USA
Today proclaimed:
Schiavo has literally become the body politic.9
This symbolic condensation of Schiavos body and the American
political body
symptomatized a growing popular anxiety about the place of voice
in democratic
citizenship. Like the other voiceless bodies that have come to
populate the US
citizenry, Schiavo posed a crisis of legitimacy for democratic
logics of self-
representation. Schiavos voiceless body interrupted biopolitical
strategies of American
governance that hinged on citizens right to self-determination.
In a democracy
rhetorically grounded on the unalienable rights to both life and
liberty, only Schiavo
herself was endowed with the right to decide on her own life.
However, Schiavos
incapacity to speak made it impossible for her to exercise that
right.
This impasse called for a prosopopeic maneuver that consolidated
democratic
governance by projecting the voice of its citizens. Prosopopeia,
the trope of giving
voice to a voiceless body, rhetorically resecured the link
between citizens rights to life
and liberty*that is, voice rearticulated the biopolitical and
sovereign status of
382 M. Foley
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democratic citizens. The first section of this essay traces the
opening of an aporia
between sovereign and biopolitical rationalities in the rhetoric
of self-determination
that characterized the Schiavo case. The second section of the
essay tracks the
provisional closure of that aporia through the reascription of
voice and choice to
post-Schiavo citizens.10 The essay concludes by arguing that the
contemporary
rhetoric of democratic citizenship increasingly relies on such
prosopopeic maneuvers
to invest bare life with sovereign rights.
Democracys Aporia: Sovereign Citizenship as a Biopolitical
Technology
According to Michel Foucault, biopower, or powers hold over
life, inverts the
classically defined right of the sovereign state.11 While
sovereign power is the right to
kill, or, more specifically, the right to take life or let live,
biopower is instead the
right to make live and to let die.12 That is, the biopolitical
state exercises power by
improving, prolonging, and regularizing life. As Foucault
explains, this transforma-
tion by which care for individual life is becoming . . . a duty
for the state requires anew form of governance that he terms the
political technology of individuals.13 In
contrast with the negative, juridical function of the state, the
biopolitical state
exercises power through productive interventions in citizens
lives.
Giorgio Agamben explains that this politicization of life stages
modern
democracys specific aporia: it wants to put the freedom and
happiness of men
into play in the very place*bare life*that marked their
subjection.14 This aporia isa point of inflection and intersection,
where sovereign and biopolitical logics bend
and blend together. Agamben explains that biopower and
sovereignty are not
completely separate political rationalities. Instead, democracy
harbors a zone of
undecidability, where the sovereign right to kill and the
biopolitical mandate to let
die become indistinguishable. This point of indistinction is
bare life, the body
reduced to its most basic material condition of living. The
seemingly oppositional
technologies of biopolitics and sovereignty converge on the bare
life of democratic
citizens.
This is because democratic logics doubly position citizens as
both sovereign
subjects and biopolitical objects. To explain this convergence
of sovereignty and
biopower, Agamben turns to Aristotles conceptualization of
citizenship, declaring:
Aristotle may well have given the most beautiful formulation of
the aporia that lies
at the foundation of Western politics.15 Distinct from the other
animals, Aristotles
zoon politikon, or political animal, is a living being who acts
on and governs his own
life. Aristotle distinguishes the political animal as born with
regard to life, but
existing essentially with regard to the good life.16 This
citizen is a subject who takes
his (or her) natural life as an object.
This political logic splits citizens and folds them back on
themselves. Agamben
writes: There is politics because man is the living being, who
in language, separates
and opposes himself to his own bare life and, at the same time,
maintains himself in
relation to that bare life as an inclusive exclusion.17 Citizens
exceed bare life by
becoming political subjects. Citizens become political subjects
by taking their own
Voicing Terri Schiavo 383
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bare life as the object of their political conduct. In this way,
democratic citizenship
requires living beings to circle back on themselves. The
self-governing citizen serves
simultaneously as the sovereign subject who exerts power over
life and the
biopolitical object whose life is targeted by that power.
Consequently, Agamben argues that the sovereign technique of
power over life is
not simply inverted by the biopolitical state. Rather, it is
introjected within the
biopolitical order in the form of an exception. Agamben explains
that paradoxically,
the sovereign decision is at the same time, outside and inside
the biopolitical
order.18 That is, the sovereign decision establishes the rule of
law without being
subject to it. Sovereign power functions as an exception to its
own rule: the law is
outside itself.19 Sovereign power is eccentric in the strict
etymological sense of the
word: its center lies outside.
Agamben argues that the sovereign mode of power reemerges in
biopolitical
governance at this ex-centric location. Sovereign and
biopolitical logics converge on
bare life, the threshold between life and death. He reasons: If
there is a line in every
modern state marking the point at which the decision on life
becomes a decision on
death, and biopolitics can turn into thanatopolitics, this line
no longer appears today
as a stable border dividing two clearly distinct zones.20 Bare
life becomes a limit
exterior to but constitutive of the bioregulatory order. For
Agamben, this limit marks
the place where thanatopolitics*the sovereign decision to
kill*may be exercised.Agamben highlights the faux vivant, or brain
dead person, as a paradigm case of
bare lifes subjection to this sovereign exception.21 Brain death
exemplifies the zone
of indetermination in which the words life and death had lost
their meaning.22
Agamben explains that such brain-dead bare life crosses a
threshold where biopolitics
gives way to sovereign thanatopolitics: Some of the most ardent
partisans of brain
death and modern biopolitics propose that the state should
decide on the moment of
death, removing all obstacles to intervention on the faux
vivant.23 For Agamben, the
faux vivant marks the increasingly permeable borders of the
biopolitical order, the
mutable limit that enables the state to politicize not only
life, but also death. A
number of scholars have interpreted Schiavos case as an exemplar
of this
Agambenian exception.24
Yet Terri Schiavo seems to challenge the rule of sovereign
exception that Agamben
theorizes. Although Schiavo occupied an indeterminate zone
between life and death,
her body was not treated as an exception to the biopolitical
order. As Slavoj Zizek
notes in passing, Schiavos body was not subjected to the
thanatopolitical techniques
of sovereign power that Agamben describes: Terri Schiavo was a
human being
reduced to bare vegetative life, but this bare life was
protected by the entire state
apparatus.25 Although the Florida governor and US president, the
Florida and US
legislatures, and the Florida and US judiciaries took various
positions on the Schiavo
case, they all agreed on one thing: the state did not have the
sovereign authority to
dispose of Schiavos life.
At both the Florida state and US federal level, executive and
legislative officials
made vain attempts to contain Schiavos bare life within its
bioregulatory logic.
Within a week of the court-ordered removal of Schiavos feeding
and hydration tubes,
384 M. Foley
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the Florida Legislature enacted Florida Public Law, Chapter
2003418. The act,commonly known as Terris Law, enabled
then-Governor Jeb Bush to issue a one-
time stay in cases where family members challenged the
withholding of nutrition and
hydration from a patient in a persistent vegetative state when
the patient had no
advance directive or healthcare proxy.26
Governor Bush immediately issued an executive order on Schiavos
behalf. He
justified his intervention in an editorial letter to the New
York Times: In cases where
patients do not have an expressed written directive regarding
end-of-life decisions
and where the patients guardian has a conflict of interest, it
only makes sense to err
on the side of life.27 The governors brother, US President
George W. Bush, echoed
his statement after signing the federal version of Terris Law,
insisting that the
American government must always err on the side of life.28 The
public embraced
the meme err on the side of life, which appeared in readers
letters to the New York
Times, Washington Post, The Economist, and Newsweek.29
Both Bushes supported the pro-life policy by reciting a quite
Foucauldian
biopolitical formula: Foucault writes that biopolitical
discourse links foster[ing]
citizens lives and the states strength.30 Governor Jeb Bush
explained that the
government ought to err on the side of life because Government
has a duty to
protect the weak, the disabled and the vulnerable, a duty to
protect our most
vulnerable citizens.31 President George W. Bush likewise
explained: The essence of
civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak.
In cases where there are
serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the
favor of life.32 On
the night the US Congress passed the Palm Sunday Compromise, the
federal version
of Terris Law, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist ended his
closing address on the
Senate floor by quoting an email he received from a constituent:
Not only do the
weak need the strong, but the strong need the weak . . . If ever
the weak needed a
champion, it is now.33 In this repeated rationalization, the
strong nation and the
weak citizen appear mutually dependent. The government may
consolidate its own
strength by protecting Schiavos life, the life of the weak
citizen. Furthermore,
according to this biopolitical rhetoric, the failure to protect
her life would constitute a
failure to fulfill the essential duty of government.
While this biopolitical justification for government aimed to
legitimate executive
and legislative actions that kept Schiavo alive, it ultimately
revealed that those actions
did indeed err on the side of life. The moment executive and
legislative offic-
ials decided in favor of life, rather than merely protecting it,
they executed a sovereign
decision that violated their own bioregulatory rationale.
Embodying bare life, Schiavo
symptomatized a fundamental undecidability between taking life
or letting live and
making live or letting die, the aporia between sovereign and
biopolitical governing
rationalities. Unable to exercise sovereignty over her own life,
Terri Schiavos bare life
marked the inflection point where the states biopolitical
mandate to protect life
mutates into an illegitimate sovereign decision. Protesters
insisted that the state could
not legitimately make her live any more than it could
legitimately take her life. Both
right-to-die and right-to-life advocates criticized the
government for overreaching its
Voicing Terri Schiavo 385
-
biopolitical function of protecting Schiavos life to make an
illegitimate sovereign
decision on whether she should live or die.34
On one hand, right-to-life advocates described the court-ordered
removal of
Schiavos feeding tubes as judicial murder, passive execution,
and state and
federal support for murder.35 Right-to-life protesters carried
signs declaring:
Hospice or Auschwitz?; Murder is Legal in America; Next They
Come for
You: AmericaNazis.36 Comparing Schiavos death with a fascist,
state-sponsoredHolocaust, right-to-life advocates questioned the
right of the state to determine
Schiavos life unworthy and exercise a sovereign decision to kill
her.37 On the other
hand, right-to-die advocates questioned the sovereign
legislative and executive
interventions that extended her life, insisting that Terri was
being forced to live and
should be permitted to die.38 Editorialists compared government
interventions to
keep Terri alive to prolonged torture and cruel and unusual
punishment.39 Like
the right-to-life protesters, right-to-die protesters criticized
the government for a
violent and unjustified intervention in Terri Schiavos life. On
the terrain of bare life,
the governments biopolitical mandate to promote life became
indistinguishable from
sovereign force.
Rather than affirming the sovereignty of the state to determine
who may live and
who may die, the bare life of Terri Schiavo did precisely the
opposite. Discussions of
executive, legislative, and judicial interventions in the case
frequently indicted
legislators in particular and the government as a whole for an
illegitimate exercise
of authority. According to US News & World Report, many
Americans criticized
Congress for exercising an abuse of power in the Terri Schiavo
case.40 One
editorialist wrote that the American people fear government
invasion of privacy.41
Another likewise argued that the Schiavo case brought out the
worst impulses of
government to meddle in the most private of moments.42 National
polls seconded
these editorialists sentiments. A poll conducted by the ABC
television network
showed that 70% of Americans thought the involvement of the
federal government
was inappropriate.43 A CBS network poll reported that 82% of
Americans did not
support government intervention in the Schiavo case.44 As one
editorialist put it: In
this most personal and intimate space where life meets death,
there should be a sign
on the door: Congress Keep Out.45
Public responses to the Schiavo case did not invite the states
sovereign decision in
this zone of indetermination where life meets death, as Agambens
reading of the faux
vivant suggests. Instead, the bare life of Terri Schiavo
produced a crisis of legitimation
in the logic of American democracy by exposing the sovereign
force of law that
underwrites biopolitical techniques of government. To uphold the
biopolitical order,
lawmakers had to step beyond the bounds of that order to execute
a sovereign
decision. While the state could strengthen and legitimize itself
by protecting the bare
life of Terri Schiavo, it could only do so by infringing on her
political life: her status as
zoon politikon, a citizen with the self-sovereign right to act
upon and govern her own
life. Schiavos bare life appears in public discourse as a
surplus-figure of citizenship;
neither sovereign nor biopolitical techniques for governing life
could contain her
rights-bearing body.
386 M. Foley
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Editorialists described state intervention in the case not only
as an abuse of power,
but as the abuse of Terri Schiavos rights.46 A letter to the
editor of the Washington
Post argued: The Schiavo case is . . . a matter of protecting
the civil rights of a person
with severe disabilities.47 An op-ed piece in the New York Times
likewise argued that
the American public shrank from the sight of Schiavo being taken
captive by
politics because the right of individual self-determination is
one of the primary
American ideals.48 Another New York Times editorial even pointed
out that Schiavo
was the Italian word for slave, declaring that Schiavo has
become a slave to the
games politicians play.49 Against a vision of state domination
and enslavement, the
public idealized Schiavos right to self-determination.
Public reactions to the Schiavo case insisted that the state had
no legitimate
authority over her life because it would usurp Schiavos
constitutional right to make
that decision. Described as a constitutional showdown, advocates
on various sides
of the Schiavo controversy commonly argued that the proper and
legitimate role of
the state was not to decide on Schiavos life, but to secure her
right to do so.50
Editorialists criticized Congress for trampling on the
constitution, and even
recommended that the overreaching legislators should reread the
United States
Constitution.51 Editorials often quoted its preamble, insisting
that Schiavos rights
should be protected because rights were the founding principle
of American
government. For example:
Our American faith teaches us that, all men are created equal,
that they areendowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights, that among these are life,liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. And the purpose of all American governmentis to secure
these rights, not destroy them.52
Terri Schiavo, the citizen without sovereignty, posed a crisis
of legitimacy for the
American biopolitical order, constitutionally bound not only to
protect life, but to
secure liberty. After Governor Bush issued the executive order
to reinsert Schiavos
feeding and hydration tubes, the American Civil Liberties Union
petitioned the
Florida Supreme Court, arguing that Terris Law was
unconstitutional on its face
because it unjustifiably authorizes the Governor to summarily
deprive Florida
citizens of their constitutional right to privacy.53 Citing
Florida case law, the petition
argues that the right to privacy includes a persons right of
self-determination to
control his or her own body and specifies that this right should
not be lost because
the cognitive and vegetative condition of the patient prevents a
conscious exercise of
the choice to refuse further extraordinary treatment. The
petition ironically*butsuccessfully*argued that although Terri had
lost the ability to make the sovereigndecision on her life, she had
not lost the right to do so.
As a result, the Florida Supreme Court struck down Terris Law as
unconstitu-
tional, agreeing that the law abolish[ed] Theresas vested right
to privacy because it
does not even require the Governor to consider the patients
wishes.54 Furthermore,
the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts directive to
remove Schiavos
feeding and hydration tubes on the grounds that the case is
about Theresa Schiavos
right to make her own decision.55 The Florida Supreme Court thus
affirmed
Voicing Terri Schiavo 387
-
Schiavos sole right to decide on her own life even though she
was incapable of
making that decision. In the ruling, Florida appellate court
judge Stanley F. Birch, Jr.
criticized the legislature for acting in a manner demonstrably
at odds with our
Founding Fathers blueprint for the governance of a free
people.56 US governance,
Birch argued, requires free people*and consequently, requires
that Terri Schiavofreely determine whether she lived or died.
After the Florida court order to withdraw Schiavos feeding and
hydration based on
her right to self-determination, the US Congress responded with
its own version of
Terris Law, transferring jurisdiction on the Schiavo case to
federal courts. Unlike
the Florida law, this federal version was framed in terms of
Terri Schiavos rights: for
the alleged violation of any right of Theresa Marie Schiavo
under the Constitution.57
Even as it preempted the Florida Supreme Courts jurisdiction,
the one-page bill
recapitulated its ironic assertion of Mrs. Schiavos right to
self-determination. The
bill, signed into law by President George W. Bush,
concludes:
It is the Sense of Congress that the 109th Congress should
consider policiesregarding the status and legal rights of
incapacitated individuals who are incapableof making decisions
concerning the provision, withholding, or withdrawal of
foods,fluid, or medical care.
Although granting federal courts the power to adjudicate
Schiavos case, the federal
executive and legislature reaffirmed Schiavos right of
self-determination despite her
lack of self-determining capacity. Even after Schiavo lost her
ability to decide on her
life, the federal government charged itself with protecting her
right to do so. Ruth
Miller writes of Schiavo: Her inert body was endowed with . . .
intentions, desires,
wants, and needs; her political will was manifested through the
Florida state court
system, through politicians in Congress, through the federal
court system, through
bills signed by the executive.58 In the discourse surrounding
Terri Schiavos case, the
American government could legitimately exercise biopower, taking
her living body as
an object of power, only to the extent that Schiavo was the
self-governing, sovereign
subject of that power.
According to the democratic logic of self-governance that
pervaded popular and
political discourse on the case, Schiavos indeterminate position
between life and
death called for a decision that only she had the right to make.
However, being
between life and death made it impossible for Schiavo to make
that decision. Thus,
rather than falling into an indeterminate zone in which the
state could exercise a
thanatopolitical decision to kill, Schiavos bare life
illustrated the states investment in
the self-sovereignty of citizens as a biopolitical instrument.
Moreover, Schiavo
embodied the precariousness of citizenship as a political
technology for resolving the
democratic aporia between sovereignty and biopower.
Voiceless and choiceless, Schiavo disrupted the operation of
late modern
democratic rule, which as Nikolas Rose explains, governs through
the regulated
choices of individual citizens, now construed as subjects of
choices and aspirations to
self-actualization and self-fulfillment.59 In this democratic
order, sovereign and
biopolitical rationalities jointly configure the democratic
citizen as a political
388 M. Foley
-
technology. The sovereignty once consolidated by the juridical
state is dispersed,
vested in citizens as self-actualizing governors of their own
lives. Citizens, as
sovereign subjects, take their lives as objects for biopolitical
transformation.
When the democratic citizen becomes the primary political
technology through
which sovereign power is exercised, the sovereign exception*the
law is outsideitself *applies not directly to the juridical state
but to citizens as its self-governingexecutors. The sovereign
exception of democratic rule thus may be stated: citizens are
outside themselves. Citizens internal division into subject and
object serves as
the necessary precondition for their sovereignty over their own
living bodies. To
restate Agambens formulation of the conditions for politics:
There is politics
because man is the living being, who in language, separates and
opposes himself to his
own bare life and, at the same time, maintains himself in
relation to that bare life as
an inclusive exclusion.60 That is, people become self-governing
political subjects,
capable of taking their own lives as objects, by becoming
speaking subjects.
Prosopopeic Citizenship: A Rhetorical Suture for the Democratic
Aporia
Democratic citizens, as both sovereign subjects and biopolitical
objects, are
structurally split. The citizens political split calls for a
rhetorical splint: the capacity
to speak projected by prosopopeia. In speaking, citizens perform
and transform their
political lives, becoming the autopoetic and autotelic
principles of their own
governance. Terri Schiavo, as a citizen who could not speak,
interrupted the
presumptive self-presence of citizenship that sutures the aporia
between sovereign
and biopolitical governing rationalities. By reattributing
speech to Terri Schiavo,
popular and political discourses tried to close the aporia
between those governing
rationalities. Her case demonstrates why citizens must have
speech to fulfill their
function as the relay-point between sovereign and biopolitical
modes of democratic
rule.
Speech is the instrument that allows citizens to pass from bare
life to political life.
Aristotle explains that humans achieve political life through
speech: Why man is a
political animal [zoon politikon] in greater measure than any
bee or any gregarious
animal is clear . . . man alone of the animals possesses speech
[zoon logon echon].61
For Aristotle, the transformation of bare bodily life into
political life parallels the
transition from phone to logos, from the embodied voice that
belongs to all living
beings to the spoken language that characterizes human political
community. Phone,
Aristotle suggests, is distinct from but included within logos:
the living, embodied
voice is an element both excluded from and retained within
political speech.
As citizenship introjects the bodys bare life into political
life, speech introjects the
embodied voice into language. Drawing again from Aristotle,
Agamben explains:
The living being has logos by taking away and conserving his own
voice in it, even as
it dwells in the polis by letting its own bare life be excluded,
as an exception, within
it.62 The democratic aporia between sovereignty and biopolitics
manifests not only
in the inclusive exclusion of bare life in political life, but
furthermore in the inclusive
exclusion of phone in logos. Insofar as the bare life of the
citizens body functions as a
Voicing Terri Schiavo 389
-
zone of exception, a hidden point of intersection between
sovereign and biopolitical
models of power, so too does the citizens embodied voice.
The politicization of bare life necessitates the collapse of
phone into logos; it is for
this reason that Agamben calls the politicization of bare life
the metaphysical task
par excellence.63 The self-governing citizen, the technological
hinge of sovereignty
and biopower, rests on an Aristotlean metaphysics of presence.
That is, it rests on
the assumption that speakers are present to themselves and can,
therefore,
symbolically and politically represent themselves. Jacques
Derrida identifies and
critiques the metaphysical self-presence of Aristotles speaker,
whose spoken words
[ta en te phone] are the symbols of mental experience.64 Derrida
explains that this
privileging of the spoken word instantiates a logocentrism which
is also a
phonocentrism: absolute proximity of voice and being.65 If we
assume that spoken
words are an outward expression of a beings inner impressions,
the spoken word
appears to offer an ontological guarantee. That is, the spoken
word seems to disclose
the speakers being.
However, rather than ontologically guaranteeing the speakers
capacity for self-
representation, the spoken word*the performative articulation of
phone and logos*rhetorically constitutes that capacity. The spoken
word performs the reflexive
mechanism of self-representation: the capacity for subjects to
take themselves as
objects. This performative constitution of self-representation
is a prerequisite for the
political logic of self-governance; it allows democratic
citizens to simultaneously act
as sovereign subjects and act upon themselves as biopolitical
objects. The articulation
of phone and logos in the act of speaking is the rhetorical
suture that establishes
democratic citizenship as the linchpin of the political aporia
between sovereignty and
biopower.
Yet despite their performative articulation in speech, an
irreducible gap remains
between phone and logos. While the articulation of voice and
speech is a requisite
condition for democratic citizenship, that articulation is not a
simple, additive
linkage: the citizens embodied voice is overwritten by speech
when he or she passes
into the political community. Like bare life within political
life, voice operates as an
inclusive exclusion within speech*not only included in it, but
also excluded from itas an exception. Consequently, Agamben
explains, The space between voice and
logos is an empty space, a limit.66 The embodied voice functions
as the inclusive
exclusion of language, a limit at the center of political life.
As an exception or internal
non-presence within logos, the voice simultaneously underwrites
and undermines the
citizens capacity for self-representation*and consequently,
vexes the democraticarticulation of sovereignty and biopower.
Schiavo epitomized the failure of the citizens phono- and
logocentric self-
representation; the undecidability of the question on Schiavos
life or death was
rhetorically formulated as Schiavos inability to speak her
choice. Against those who
insisted on Schiavos right to self-determination, a letter to
the editor of the New York
Times reminded the nation: Terri Schiavo cant speak.67 Speech
was the missing link
between sovereignty and biopower in Schiavos citizenship: to
exercise her sovereign
right over her own life, Schiavo needed to speak. Without the
suture of speech,
390 M. Foley
-
Schiavos bare life rhetorically ruptured the fragile
articulation of sovereignty and
biopolitics that characterizes American democratic rule.
Schiavos speechless body rhetorically produced a breach in
democratic citizenship.
Consequently, the democratic mandate to protect Schiavos rights
required a proxy to
compensate for her lack of speech: editorialists insisted,
Someone has to speak for
those who cant.68 Moreover, commentators speculated that Schiavo
created a public
outcry precisely because she was unable to speak for herself. A
Washington Post op-ed
declared: Schiavo couldnt speak for herself . . . This silence,
this absence, made her
an attractive figure for people with the presumption to speak
for her.69 A New York
Times editorial similarly explained, Since she cannot speak for
herself, those close to
her*along with thousands of strangers who never heard of Mrs.
Schiavo before hermisfortune*have spoken and often shouted on her
behalf.70
While commentators largely agreed that the speechless Schiavo
needed a surrogate
to speak on her behalf, they highlighted the problem of
identifying a legitimate proxy
for Schiavo: If we are unable to speak for ourselves, who speaks
for us?71 A New
York Times columnist explained: The case has become a flashpoint
in the national
debate over who should decide when an incapacitated persons life
should end, and
who should speak for the wishes of those who have not signed
directives.72
Accordingly, the controversy shifted, turning not on whether
Schiavo had the right to
live or die, but on who could serve as the proper stand-in
speaker to defend Schiavos
right to make her own decision. A letter to the editor of the
New York Times
encapsulates this quandary:
In the tragic Terri Schiavo case and similar cases where
patients cannot decide forthemselves, the question becomes this:
Should the wishes of the parents or thespouses be honored? Who
holds the best interests of the patient? And who bestspeaks for the
patient and what the patient would want?73
This phrasing wavers back and forth between the wishes of the
proxy and the
interests of the patient, between the patient who cannot decide
and the proxy who
nonetheless represents the patients impossible decision. Because
she is unable to
speak, another letter argued: We have no way of knowing what she
would choose for
herself . . . whose rights are we talking about here?74 The
editorial continues,
insisting that rather than protecting Schiavos right to choose
life or death, proxy
decision-makers dangerously assume the sovereign authority to
kill. These editorials
highlight the dilemma posed by proxy speech: even as a surrogate
represents Schiavos
own sovereign decision, it also substitutes for her decision.
The proxy functions as a
Derridian supplement, in which the play of substitution fills
and marks a
determined lack.75 Even as proxies tried to resecure Schiavos
right to decide on
her own life, filling the gap between phone and logos, they only
further marked that
gap, undermining Schiavos right to self-determination as a
viable technology of
governance.
Resuscitating Terri Schiavos political life required a
reinstatement of the presence
between phone and logos, a rhetorical rearticulation of her
voice and her word
amid the public cacophony that surrounded her case. Resecuring
Schiavos right to
Voicing Terri Schiavo 391
-
self-determination required a remarkable public display of
prosopopeia.76 As Paul de
Man explains, prosopopeia is the fiction of an apostrophe to an
absent, deceased or
voiceless entity, which posits the possibility of the latters
reply and confers upon it
the power of speech.77 Rather than speaking as proxies on her
behalf, people began
putting words in Schiavos mouth. Advocates both for and against
the removal of her
feeding tubes couched their arguments in the projected voice of
Terri Schiavo herself.
Editorialists began to imagine what Schiavo would say if she
could speak, peppering
public discourse with speculations about the wishes of the dying
woman herself,
and patients autonomous decision-making.78 The Washington Post
dubbed this
phenomenon Terri speak: advocates tendency to phrase their own
positions on the
case in terms of what Terri wants.79 Public responses aimed to
reinvest Schiavo with
citizenship by rhetorically endowing her with the sovereign
decision to live or die.
Public prosopopeia reanimated Schiavo as a self-determining
citizen by rhetorically
reconsolidating the self-presence of her voice and word.
The state also resorted to this prosopopeic strategy to
determine whether Schiavo
would live or die. Despite all the legislative and executive
interventions in the Schiavo
case, Florida state and federal courts of appeals ultimately
upheld the 2000 ruling to
discontinue Schiavos nutrition and hydration because the Florida
circuit court had
affirmed Schiavos right to speak for herself and decide on her
own life. The Florida
court based its ruling on clear and convincing evidence of Terri
Schiavos oral
declarations concerning her intention as to what she would have
done under the
present circumstances.80
Although the courts judgment acknowledged that neither side is
exempt from
finger pointing as to possible conflicts of interest, her
feuding familys ventriloquism
of Schiavos own statements nonetheless operated as the best
available evidence of
Terris own intentions.81 Good Morning America reported: The
court weighed the
evidence, heard the witnesses, and found clearly that these were
Terris wishes. The
fact is this is about what Terri wants, not what her parents
want, not what her
husband wants, but carrying out her wishes.82 No one could
decide on Terri
Schiavos life but Schiavo herself*no guardian, no proxy would
do.At the end of a heavily debated legal battle over Schiavos
guardianship, the
decision came down to a few secondhand, contradictory statements
that Schiavo
herself allegedly made before her collapse. Several witnesses,
including Schiavos
mother, husband, and sister-in-law, testified about various
jokes and comments that
Terri Schiavo made while watching different made-for-television
movies about people
on life support.83 Protecting Schiavos right to
self-determination required a tragically
thin reconstruction of what Terri Schiavo herself would have
wanted based on the
rhetorical projection of Schiavos own oral declarations.84 As
one editorialist asked:
Is it reasonable to draw that conclusion from some offhand
remarks she supposedly
made years ago?85 Another questioned: Do these conflicting
post-TV accounts
really settle the question of Terris intent?86 Legally, they
did. By attributing its
official decision to Schiavo herself, the circuit court
recuperated Schiavos right to
self-determination. The prosopopeic reanimation of Schiavos
voice rhetorically
reestablished her as a self-governing citizen capable of
choosing her own death.
392 M. Foley
-
While the Schiavo question was settled legally, it remained far
from settled in the
popular imagination. The public exigence that Schiavo raised did
not end with her
own death: the Schiavo controversy called for prosopopeic
citizenship on a much
larger scale. Using prosopopeia to recover Schiavos voice,
citizens deliberating on the
Schiavo case were often struck by the fragility of their own
voices. As de Man
explains: by making death speak, the symmetrical structure of
the trope implies, by
the same token, that the living are struck dumb, frozen in their
own death.87 The
voices and choices of all citizens appeared vulnerable after the
highly-charged public
and political wrangling over Schiavos rights. The Schiavo case
illustrated that
citizens right to self-determination was not coextensive with
their ability to exercise
it through speech. Schiavo showed that citizens capacity to
govern their lives waned
before their lives were extinguished. The living began to call
for a way to extend their
speech to the point of death.
A theretofore underutilized governing technique came to the
forefront to help
citizens avoid becoming the next Terri Schiavo: the living
will.88 Also known as
an advance healthcare directive, living will is an apt name for
a governing
technique that articulates life and choice, self-sovereignty and
biopower. As a letter
to the editor of the New York Times put it: The Schiavo case
will prompt many to
prepare living wills to exercise some control over the end of
their lives.89 The
Schiavo case pointed out a crack in the self-governing capacity
of citizens, a crack
that the living will could mend by expanding the scope of
self-determination to the
very threshold of life itself.
Living wills consolidated citizens rights to self-determination
by projecting their
intentions beyond their capacities to speak.90 Sources including
Newsweek, the New
York Times, Washington Post, and The New Yorker explained that
living wills could
state your wishes if you are unable to speak for yourself.91
Specifically, the
Washington Post explained that the living will dictates what
kind of medical care you
want if youre unable to speak for yourself.92 As sovereign
dictator and recorded
dictation, living wills became the voicebox of citizens right to
decide on their life or
death.
The exhortation was ubiquitous: Get a living will.93 The
Economist wrote that
Schiavos case should remind any Americans who do not want to put
their families
through a similar ordeal to start writing their living wills
right away.94 A legal expert
for the New York Times explained: Post-Schiavo, its become
essential to have a living
will.95 In the final days of Schiavos life, First Lady Laura
Bush announced that she
and President George W. Bush both had living wills, and
encouraged other
Americans to prepare them.96 Florida Senate President James E.
King, Jr. passed
out applications for living wills on the Senate floor, urging
Senators to fill them out
and circulate them among their constituents.97 A letter to the
New York Times
celebrated this exhortation to write living wills as the one
positive outcome of the
Schiavo case.98 Another New York Times readers letter even
declared that situations
such as Schiavos scream for the necessity of living wills,
vividly yoking self-
determination to the amplification of citizens voices.99
Newsweek, USA Today, the
Voicing Terri Schiavo 393
-
New York Times, and Washington Post all published instructions
on how to prepare
living wills. USA Today even included directions for throwing
living will parties.100
Americans responded in massive numbers. The Washington Post
estimated: by the
tens of thousands, Americans were taking steps to make sure
their own intentions for
their deathbeds were crystal clear.101 Visits to the US Living
Will Registry website
climbed from about 500 per day to between 30 and 50 thousand per
day in the month
leading up to Schiavos death.102 A Time magazine poll the week
Schiavo died
reported that 69% of Americans who had not yet signed living
wills were now
planning to draft them.103 Headlines proclaimed: Groups See
Flood of Inquiries for
Living Wills, and Many Seeking One Final Say on End of Life.104
The public rush
to acquire living wills amounted to a mass act of
auto-prosopopeia that promised to
give citizens the last word on their lives. Prosopopeia, the
trope de Man describes as
the fiction of the voice-from-beyond-the-grave,105 rhetorically
revived citizens self-
determination at the limit of life and death.
Yet even that rhetorical suture was incomplete. While
increasingly popular, some
critics speculated that living wills would not fulfill their
promise to resecure the
autonomous decision-making of end-of-life patients. A USA Today
headline summed
up the problem: Living Wills Not Always Followed to the
Letter.106 The letter*awritten document*seemed a meager substitute
for patients embodied act ofspeaking. Some skeptics suggested that
living wills could not possibly anticipate the
infinite range107 of health conditions and contingencies that
incapacitated patients
face; others noted that patients preferences change over time
and across
circumstance. Still others claimed that caregivers often ignore
or override the
decisions that patients lay out in advance directives.
Most of all, opponents emphasized the danger that living wills
remained open to
misinterpretation.108 They warned that living wills provide only
vague, inade-
quate, or paltry clues about patients wishes.109 They worried
that patients living
wills might still be compromised by the guesswork and faulty
assumptions of
healthcare providers and family members.110 Given the likelihood
of misreading
patients directives, several critics cautioned that living wills
can cause more harm
than good.111 Even Schiavo-inspired proponents of living wills
admitted that due to
ambiguities in interpretation, the documents were not perfect
and not fool-
proof.112
The overwhelming popular insistence on citizens right to
autonomous self-
governance rendered even their personally written directives a
grudgingly accepted
replacement for their spoken word. Although the prosopopeic
maneuver of living
wills provided a momentary point of political stasis, it did not
and could not
completely resolve the dilemma that citizens without speech pose
for democracy. At
most, prosopopeia offers a fragile prosthetic to extend citizens
voices and choices
beyond their capacity for speech. Without the embodied
performance of speech, the
democratic logic of self-governance short-circuits. Speechless
bodies break the self-
reflexive circuit that democratic citizenship establishes
between sovereign subjects
and biopolitical objects.
394 M. Foley
-
Voicing Life Itself
While the Schiavo case offers an especially vivid symptom of
this political breach and
its prosopopeic suture, her case is not the only sign of the
escalating problematization
of voice in democratic citizenship. We hear progressively louder
calls to grant the
rights of citizenship to non-speaking bodies as voices and
choices are projected onto
more and more forms of life. Just as end-of-life activists
resecured Schiavos self-
sovereign rights by attributing voice to her silent body,
pro-life abortion protesters
imagine talking fetuses.113 Environmental rights activists speak
in the name of
Mother Earth.114 Animal rights organizations ventriloquize
endangered species,
livestock, and household pets.115 In a parallelism that cuts
across the partisan
political spectrum, advocates for the rights of these speechless
bodies herald the rise
of a prosopopeic form of citizenship.
Although the political and ethical entailments of attributing
voice to these various
live bodies are certainly not reducible to one another, they
collectively interrupt and
reconfigure the democratic articulation of voice, life, and
rights. Like Schiavo, these
speechless forms of life have emerged as surplus-figures of
citizenship that
problematize the democratic conjuncture of sovereignty and
biopower: these live
bodies exist as biopolitical objects without the capacity to
govern their lives as
sovereign, speaking subjects. Moreover, like Schiavo, these
surplus-citizens call for
prosopopeic rhetorics that endow them with voices in order to
incorporate their
speechless bodies within the reflexive democratic logic of
self-representation.
Yet, even as the prosopopeic ascription of voice to bare life
attempts to reestablish
the self-representational capacity on which democratic
citizenship depends, it reveals
the ruse underlying that self-representational logic. As these
surplus-citizens belie the
phonocentric sleight-of-hand that underwrites
self-representation, they show how all
democratic citizens require what Bruno Latour calls speech
prostheses. He explains,
no beings, not even humans, speak on their own, but always
through something or
someone else.116 That is, even citizens who appear fully capable
of representing
themselves through speech require prosopopeic prosthetics. As
the public response to
the Schiavo case illustrates, speechless citizens bring speaking
citizens face to face
with the vulnerability of their own voices. Speaking citizens
depend on prosopopeic
prosthetics, in this case living wills, to extend their capacity
to symbolically and
politically represent themselves. As prosopopeia becomes a
pervasive rhetorical form
that crafts US citizenship today, it exposes a mutability*an
undecidable silence*atthe heart of democracys logic of
self-representation.
As speechless citizens have brought the prosopopeic form to the
forefront in
contemporary American political culture, the impact of
prosopopeia touches even
those citizens whose capacity for self-representation seems most
secure. When
applied to bodies without speech, prosopopeia allows us to
imagine self-governing
citizens where there were none, to imagine that life itself has
a voice. However, when
applied to speaking bodies, the projection of sovereign voice
onto bare life can
undermine citizens capacity to govern their own lives. Thus,
even while various
branches of the Florida and US governments maneuvered to protect
Schiavos right to
Voicing Terri Schiavo 395
-
choose her own life or death, 48 of the 50 United States,
including Florida, legally
deny end-of-life patients who can speak the right to choose
their own death through
physician-assisted suicide.117 Ventriloquizing the bare life of
an already-speaking
citizen pits that citizens bare life against his or her
political life, ultimately justifying
the make live biopolitical agenda of the American democratic
state. As prosopopeia
imagines bare life to speak for itself, this trope enables the
democratic state apparatus
to speak in its name. To the extent that the prosopopeic
politicization of bare life
becomes a commonplace of American citizenship, life itself
becomes sovereign.
The rhetorical transformation of mute, life-bearing bodies into
voiced, rights-
bearing citizens signals this increasing politicization of bare
life. However, it
demonstrates that the politicization of bare life need not lead
inevitably to a
thanatopolitical state, as Agamben suggests, in which stripping
citizens down to their
bare lives dehumanizes them and justifies the states sovereign
decision to kill them.
The prosopopeic mode of politicizing bare life does the
opposite: it personifies bare
life and inscribes it with the sovereign right to speak for
itself. As Schiavos case
illustrates, the politicization of bare life may take this more
thoroughly democratic
form, in which bare life is not merely a voiceless object.
Instead, bare life becomes the
site of a vocal projection that rhetorically constitutes it as a
self-governing*and thus,democratically governable*subject.
Notes
[1] For an exemplary treatment of the extension of womens
liberation and civil rights rhetoric
to animal and environmental rights, see Roderick Nash, The
Rights of Nature: A History of
Environmental Ethics (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1989).
[2] Jason Edward Black, Extending the Rights of Personhood,
Life, and Voice to Sensate
Others: A Homology of Right to Life and Animal Rights Rhetoric,
Communication
Quarterly 51 (2003): 31231. Although Black does not specifically
address environmentalrights rhetoric in this essay, Nash shows how
tropes of personhood and voice also apply
there.
[3] Black, Extending the Rights, 3213; Nash, Rights of Nature,
3.[4] For a state-of-the-art review and critique of this body of
scholarship, see Eric King Watts,
Voice and Voicelessness in Rhetorical Studies, Quarterly Journal
of Speech 87 (2001):
17996.[5] For example, Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and
Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms,
Organizations, and States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1970); Sidney Verba,
Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic
Voluntarism in
American Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1995).
[6] Watts, Voice and Voicelessness in Rhetorical Studies,
181.
[7] Abby Goodnough, A Right-to-Die Battle Enters its Final Days,
New York Times, October 15,
2003, A12.
[8] Right to Die Comatose Womans Force-feeding Resumes, World
News Tonight, American
Broadcasting Corporation, October 21, 2003,
http://web.lexisnexis.com/univers (accessed
13 November 2008).
[9] Jonathan Turley, Temptation Tops the Constitution, USA
Today, March 23, 2005, A13.
[10] Denise Grady, The Best Way to Keep Control: Leave
Instructions, New York Times, March 29,
2005, F5.
396 M. Foley
-
[11] Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the
College de France, 197576,trans. David Macey (New York: Macmillan,
2003), 239.
[12] Ibid., 241. For a thoroughgoing Foucauldian analysis that
situates the Schiavo case within
the larger discourse formation of right-to-die rhetoric, see
Todd McDorman, Controlling
Death: Bio-Power and the Right-to-Die Controversy, Communication
and Critical/Cultural
Studies 2 (2005): 25779.[13] Michel Foucault, The Political
Technology of Individuals, in Michel Foucault: Power, Vol. 3,
ed. James Fabian (New York: The New Press, 1991), 404.
[14] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life,
trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), 910.[15] Ibid.,
11.
[16] Aristotle, Politics, trans. Harris Rackham (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1932), 11.
[17] Agamben, Homo Sacer, 8.
[18] Ibid., 15.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid., 122.
[21] Ibid., 165.
[22] Ibid., 164.
[23] Ibid., 165.
[24] For example, Jeffrey Bishop, Biopolitics, Terri Schiavo,
and the Sovereign Subject of
Death, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 29 (2008): 53857;
Joshua Perry, Biopolitics atthe Bedside: Proxy Wars and Feeding
Tubes, Journal of Legal Medicine 28 (2007): 17192.
[25] Slavoj Zizek, The Parallax View (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2006), 372.
[26] An Act Relating to the Authority of the Governor to Issue a
One-time Stay, Florida. Public
Law, 2003418 (October, 21 2003).[27] John Ellis Bush, Schiavos
Life and Death, New York Times, June 18, 2005, A12.
[28] The Economist, The Sad Case of Terri Schiavo, March 26,
2005.
[29] The Economist, Whose Life is it, Anyway?, November 1, 2003,
27; Newsweek, Mail Call:
Dreams of Revolution, August 15, 2005, 11; New York Times,
Congress, the Courts and the
Terri Schiavo Case, March 23, 2005, A5; E. J. Dionne Jr., A Thin
View of Life,
Washington Post, March 25, 2005, A19.
[30] Foucault, Political Technology, 415.
[31] Bush, Schiavos Life and Death.
[32] National Public Radio, E. J. Dionne and David Brooks
Discuss the Death of Terri Schiavo,
All Things Considered, March, 31 2005.
[33] National Review, Corner Extra: Frist on Terri Schiavo,
March 18, 2005, http://
www.nationalreview.com/comment/frist200503181027.asp (accessed
November 13, 2008).
[34] Delimited within this essays scope, I focus narrowly on the
opposition to state intervention
that these rights-based discourses shared. For an in-depth
rhetorical analysis of the complex
ethical controversy the Schiavo case provoked between
right-to-die and right-to-life
movements, see Michael Hyde and Sarah McSpiritt, Coming to Terms
with Perfection: The
Case of Terri Schiavo, Quarterly Journal of Speech 93 (2007):
15078.[35] Deborah Sharp, Fla. Court OKs Letting Woman Die, USA
Today, October 15, 2003, A3;
New York Times, Jeb Bushs Move in the Schiavo Case, June 21,
2005, A4; Tampa Tribune,
Divided by Belief, March 22, 2005, 13.
[36] Rick Lyman, Protesters with Hearts on Sleeves and Anger on
Signs, New York Times,
March 28, 2005, A1.
[37] The Economist, The Misery Goes On: Terri Schiavo, March 26,
2005, 29.
[38] Philip Kennicott, Symbol of Emptiness: Terri Schiavo Was a
Woman, Not an Idea,
Washington Post, April 1, 2005, C1.
[39] USA Today, Fla. Battle over Life, Death is Outrageous,
October 27, 2003, A11.
Voicing Terri Schiavo 397
-
[40] Danielle Knight and Kenneth Walsh, Case of Fiddling While
Rome Burns?, US News &
World Report, May 2, 2005, 14.
[41] Sacramento Bee, Terry Schiavo and Her Life, March 22, 2005,
B6.
[42] St. Petersburg Times, Terris Legacy, April 1, 2005,
A20.
[43] Francis Harris, The Family Dispute that Divides a Nation,
Daily Telegraph, March 22,
2005, 12.
[44] St. Petersburg Times, By the Numbers: Theresa Marie
Schiavo: 19632005, April 1, 2005,A6.
[45] Abigail Trafford, Terri Schiavo and the Reality Gap,
Washington Post, March 29, 2005, F6.
[46] Clinton Taylor, Where Theres No Will, American Spectator,
March 22, 2005, http://
www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id7920 (accessed November
13, 2008).[47] Washington Post, Congress, the Courts and the Terri
Schiavo Case, March 22, 2005, A16.
[48] New York Times, Theresa Marie Schiavo, April 1, 2005,
A22.
[49] Joyce Purnick, Passing Buck on Schiavo Cheats Public, New
York Times, March 24, 2005,
B1.
[50] Adam Liptak, In Florida Right-to-Die Case, Legislation that
Puts the Constitution at
Issue, New York Times, October 23, 2003, A20.
[51] New York Times, The Legacy of Terri Schiavo, April 2, 2005,
A14; Turley, Temptation.
[52] William Bennett and Brian Kennedy, The Right to Life:
Protecting One Woman, National
Review, March 24, 2005,
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/bennet_kennedy200503
240814.asp (accessed November 13, 2008).
[53] Schiavo v. Bush, No. 03-008212-CI-20, 2004 WL 628663 (Fla.
Cir. Ct. 2004), 9.
[54] Bush v. Schiavo, 886 So. 2d-136 (Fla. 2d DCA 2004), 9.
[55] Ibid., 8.
[56] Dana Milbank, GOP, Democrats Look for Symbolism in Schiavo
Case, Washington Post,
April 1, 2005, A12.
[57] An Act for the Relief of the Parents of Theresa Marie
Schiavo, Public Law 1093 (March 21,2005).
[58] Ruth Miller, On Freedom and Feeding Tubes: Reviving Terri
Schiavo and Trying Saddam,
Law and Literature 19 (2007): 174.
[59] Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political
Thought (Boston, MA: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 41.
[60] Agamben, Homo Sacer, 8.
[61] Aristotle, Politics, 11.
[62] Agamben, Homo Sacer, 8.
[63] Ibid.
[64] Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1998), 11.
[65] Ibid., 1112.[66] Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History: The
Destruction of Experience, trans. Liz Heron
(London: Verso, 1993), 8.
[67] Howard Johnson, Death with Dignity, New York Times, October
28, 2003, A22.
[68] Thane Burnett, Sounds of Life, Death: Terris End Loud,
Divisive, Toronto Sun, April 1,
2005, 5.
[69] Kennicott, Symbol.
[70] Goodnough, Right-to-Die Battle.
[71] Emily Nghiem, The Battle over Terris Life, Newsweek,
November17, 2003, 16.
[72] Abby Goodnough, Comatose Womans Case Heard by Florida
Court, New York Times,
September 1, 2004, A14.
[73] New York Times, A Life Ends, and a Nation Pauses to
Reflect, April 1, 2005, A22; New York
Times, Schiavo, the Courts and the Rule of Law, March 26, 2005,
A12.
398 M. Foley
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[74] Liza Hall, A Nation Gripped by a Drama of Life and Death,
New York Times, March 22,
2005, A22.
[75] Derrida, Of Grammatology, 157.
[76] Thanks to Randall Iden and Randall Bush on this point. See
also Lisa Keranens generative
remarks on prosopopeia in end-of-life decisions: Cause Someday
We All Die: Rhetoric,
Agency, and the Case of the Patient Preferences Worksheet,
Quarterly Journal of Speech 93
(2007): 198.
[77] Paul de Man, Autobiography as De-facement, Modern Language
Notes 94 (1979): 926.
[78] Paul McHugh, Annihilating Terry Schiavo, Commentary 119.6
(2005): 32; Kennicott,
Symbol.
[79] Kennicott, Symbol.
[80] In re Guardianship of Schiavo, No. 90-2908-GD (Fla.
Pinellas Cir. Ct., 11 February 2000), 9.
[81] Ibid., 3.
[82] Terry Schiavo Judge Grants Right to Die, Good Morning
America, American Broadcasting
Corporation, October 15, 2003, http://web.lexisnexis.com/univers
(accessed November 13,
2008).
[83] Taylor, No Will.
[84] William Saletan, As She Lay Dying, New York Times, November
6, 2005, G38.
[85] Jeff Jacoby, Praying for Certainty, Boston Globe, March 24,
2005, A15.
[86] Taylor, No Will.
[87] de Man, Autobiography, 928.
[88] USA Today, A Way to Avoid Schiavos Fate, January 27, 2005,
A10.
[89] New York Times, As an American Tragedy Unfolds, March 25,
2005, A16.
[90] Living wills enact a different form of prosopopeic
substitution than the Patient Preferences
Worksheet that Keranen analyzes in Cause Someday We All Die,
198. Instead of
substituting proxies signatures for patients autonomous
decisions, living wills perform
self-substitution: patients own signatures substitute for their
speech.
[91] For example, Jane Bryant Quinn, Capital Ideas, Newsweek,
June 25, 2007, 26.
[92] Michelle Singletary, Be Sure to Have Two Wills So Theres a
Way, Washington Post,
October 30, 2003, E3.
[93] Ibid.
[94] The Economist, Sad Case.
[95] Denise Grady, The Best Way to Keep Control: Leave
Instructions, New York Times, March 29,
2005, F5.
[96] Anne Kornblut, First Lady Says She and President Have
Living Wills, New York Times,
March 30, 2005, A12.
[97] Abby Goodnough and Adam Liptak, Governor of Florida Orders
Woman Fed in Right-to-
Die Case, New York Times, October 22, 2003, A1.
[98] Amy Rosenfeld, Schiavo, the Courts, and the Rule of Law,
New York Times, March 26,
2005, A12.
[99] New York Times, A Life Ends.
[100] Janet Kornblum, Living Wills Make the Scene, USA Today,
April 28, 2005, D8.
[101] Manny Fernandez and Paul Duggan, End of Bitter
Life-and-Death Fight Prods Many to
End-of-Life Decisions, Washington Post, April 1, 2005, A11.
[102] Marcus Franklin, Interest in Living Wills Falls after
Schiavo Saga, St. Petersburg Times,
June 18, 2005, B1.
[103] Cited in Rob Stein and Karin Brulliard, Battle Prompts a
New Interest in Living Wills,
Washington Post, March 22, 2005, A7.
[104] Janet Kornblum, Groups See Flood of Inquiries for Living
Wills, USA Today, October 27,
2003, D8; John Schwartz and James Estrin, Many Seeking One Final
Say on End of Life,
New York Times, June 17, 2005, A1.
[105] de Man, Autobiography, 927.
Voicing Terri Schiavo 399
-
[106] Janet Kornblum, Living Wills Not Always Followed to the
Letter, USA Today, March 16,
2005, D6.
[107] Jane Brody, Name a Proxy Early to Prepare for the
Unexpected, New York Times,
November 18, 2003, F7.
[108] Jane Brody, Medical Due Diligence: A Living Will Should
Spell Out the Specifics, New
York Times, November 28, 2006, F7.
[109] Living Will Laws, Alone, Cant Prevent End-of-life
Disputes, USA Today, October 30,
2003, A14.
[110] Ceci Connolly, Schiavo Raised Profile of Disabled,
Washington Post, April 2, 2005, A9;
Brody, Medical Due Diligence.
[111] Kornblum, Living Wills Not Always Followed.
[112] Sharon Jayson, A Living Will Clarifies Your Wishes, USA
Today, March 24, 2005; Grady,
Best Way to Keep Control.
[113] Barbara Johnson, Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion,
Diacritics 16 (1986): 2939;Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America
Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and
Citizenship (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997),
2553.[114] Donna Haraway, The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative
Politics for Inappropriate/d
Others, in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary
Nelson, and Paula Treichler
(New York: Routledge, 1992), 31113; Jhan Hochman, Green Cultural
Studies, in TheGreen Studies Reader: From Romanticism to
Ecocriticism, ed. Laurence Coupe (New York:
Routledge, 2000), 18992.[115] Black, Extending the Rights, 3216;
Clinton Sanders and Arnold Arluke, If Lions Could
Speak: Investigating the AnimalHuman Relationship and the
Perspectives of NonhumanOthers, Sociological Quarterly 34 (1993):
33790.
[116] Bruno Latour, The Politics of Nature, trans. Catherine
Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2004), 68.
[117] McDorman, Controlling Death.
400 M. Foley
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