The Capitalisation of ‘Excess Life’ through Life Insurance

Abstract

The role of life insurance, as portrayed by the industry, is to get individuals and heirs back in financial circulation after accidents and catastrophic events. This role, however, is not innocent. It involves a complex problematisation of what it means to render life as valuable, commodifiable and securable. Life insurance effects a translation of the current and potential economic value of a life into investment capital. In return, it offers a form of security that promises compensation against insurable events. While insuring, the industry creates economies of security that have a historical dimension as they are anchored to the development of liberal economies. These economies are possible by what is here termed the “excess of life,” which in turn becomes potential for resisting the biopolitical order of insurance. This article critically engages with the film Code 46 as an empirical site from which to make evident the political possibility of “excess life.” After an analytical depiction of the film, the article offers an analysis of the valuation of life as practices of inclusion, which involve a vital ontology and which produce moral economies. The article concludes with a reflection on the immanent resistance to life's valuation.

About the Author

Luis Lobo-Guerrero is Professor of History and Theory of International Relations at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is the author of Insuring Security: Biopolitics, Security and Risk (Routledge, 2011) and Insuring War: Sovereignty, Security and Risk (Routledge, 2012).

Notes

1. M. Winterbottom, Code 46 (Verve Pictures: Revolutions Films Ltd. / BBC / UK Film Council, 2003), preface. Subsequent citations to the film refer to time points in the film.

2. D. Staib and L. Bevere, "World Insurance in 2010: Premiums Back to Growth, Capital Increases", Swiss Re, Sigma, Vol. 2 (2011), pp. 1–42.

3. ABI, “Life Insurance”, available: <http://www.abi.org.uk/Information/Consumers/Life/Life_Insurance.aspx> (accessed 24 February 2011).

4. ABI, “Life (Non-investment) Insurance”, available: <http://www.abi.org.uk/Information/Consumers/Life/Life_Noninvestment_Insurance.aspx> (accessed 24 February 2011).

5. Natwest, “Why Is Protection Important?”, available: <http://www.natwest.com/personal/insurance/g1/life-insurance/why-life-insurance.ashx> (accessed 26 July 2012).

6. Aviva, “A Guide to Protecting Your Family's Future”, p. 6, available: <http://www.aviva.co.uk/adviser/life-insurance-documents/view-document.cgi?f=pt15366c.pdf&lid=prod-lit-New Parent Free Life Cover&lpos=pt15366c.pdf2010> (accessed 26 July 2012).

7. L. Daston, “The Moral Economy of Science”, Osiris, 2nd Series, Vol. 10 (1995), pp. 2–24, at p. 4.

8. For example, M. Dillon, Politics of Security: Towards a Political Philosophy of Continental Thought (London: Routledge, 1996); D. Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); M. Neocleous, Critique of Security (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); J. Reid, The Biopolitics of the War on Terror: Life Struggles, Liberal Modernity and the Defence of Logistical Societies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); M. Dillon and J. Reid, The Liberal Way of War: Killing to Make Life Live (London: Routledge, 2009); M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); S. Weber, Targets of Opportunity: On the Militarization of Thinking (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005).

9. For example, J. Baylis, J.W. Wirtz and C.S. Gray, Strategy in the Contemporary World: An Introduction to Strategic Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); C. v. Clausewitz, On War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); B. Buzan, People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem In International Relations (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983).

10. For example, P. O'Malley, Risk, Uncertainty and Government (London: Glasshouse Press, 2004); R. Ericson, A. Doyle and D. Barry, Insurance as Governance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003); F. Ewald, “Insurance and Risk”, in G. Burchell (ed.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmental Rationality (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 197–210; S. French and J. Kneale, “Excessive Financialisation: Insuring Lifestyles, Enlivening Subjects, and Everyday Spaces of Biosocial Excess”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 27, No. 6 (2009), pp. 1030–1053.

11. See L. Lobo-Guerrero, Insuring Security: Biopolitics, Security and Risk (London: Routledge, 2011).

12. M. Kirova and L. Steinmann, “Understanding Profitability in Life Insurance”, Sigma - Swiss Re, Vol. 1 (2012), pp. 1–35.

13. Ewald, “Insurance and Risk”, op. cit., p. 200.

14. A. Chaufton, Les Assurances leur passe, leur present, leur avenir (Paris, 1884), p. 209.

15. See C. Waldby and R. Mitchell, Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); N. Rose, The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in The Twenty-First Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).

16. M. Vatter, “Biopolitics: From Surplus Value to Surplus Life”, Theory and Event, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2009), doi: 10.1353/tae.0.0062; S. Prozorov, “The Unrequited Love of Power: Biopolitical Investment and the Refusal of Care”, Foucault Studies, Vol. 1, No. 4 (2007), pp. 53–77; M. Dillon and L. Lobo-Guerrero, “Biopolitics of Security in the 21st Century”, Review of International Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2008), pp. 265–292.

17. J. Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics (New York: Continuum, 2004), p. 13. The aesthetic regime of the arts has been explored within International Relations with regards to film, most notably by Shapiro. See M. Shapiro, Cinematic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999); M. Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics (London: Routledge, 2009); M. Shapiro, Studies in Trans-Disciplinary Method: After the Aesthetic Turn (London: Routledge, 2013).

18. Shapiro, Studies in Trans-Disciplinary Method, op. cit., p. xiii.

19. Ibid., p. xiv.

20. B.M. Goss, “Taking Cover From Progress: Michael Winterbottom's Code 46″, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2007), pp. 62–78.

21. For a more descriptive approach to the film, see Goss, op. cit.

22. Winterbottom, op. cit., 1–20.

23. Ibid., 37:38–38:03.

24. Ibid., 12:50–13:06.

25. As defined by dictionary.com (accessed 17 February 2011); See also <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intuition>.

26. Winterbottom, op. cit., 18:09–18:35.

27. Ibid., 19:54–19:56.

28. Ibid., 19:58–20:11.

29. Ibid., 1:13–1:14.

30. Ibid., 1:23:41–1:24:02.

31. See R.B.J. Walker, One World, Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace (London: L. Rienner Publishers, 1988); R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Rrelations as Political Theory (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); R.B.J. Walker, After the Globe, Before the World (London and New York: Routledge, 2010); D. Bigo, S. Carrera, E. Guild and R.B.J. Walker (eds.), Europe's 21st Century Challenge: Delivering Liberty (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010).

32. For example, L. Lobo-Guerrero, Insuring War: Sovereignty, Security and Risk (London: Routledge, 2012).

33. D.A. Stone, “The Struggle for the Soul of Health Insurance”, Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1993), pp. 287–317.

34. A distinction must be made here with specialist forms of insurance which demand specialist underwriting. These are used to insure against new events such as machines based on or exposed to new technologies (e.g. nanotechnological devices) and are underwritten at specialist markets such as Lloyd's of London. T. Maynard and D. Baxter, Nanotechnology: Recent Developments, Risks and Opportunities (London: Lloyd's of London, 2007).

35. M.A. Rothstein, Genetics and Life Insurance: Medical Underwriting and Social Policy (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute for Technology, 2004).

36. See H.W. Baillie and T.K. Casey, Is Human Nature Obsolete? Genetics, Bioengineering, and the Future of the Human Condition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004); P.L. Brockett and S.E. Tankersley, “The Genetics Revolution: Economics, Ethics and Insurance”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 16, No. 15 (1997), pp. 1661–1676; M. Cooper, Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era (London: University of Washington Press, 2008); J. Liukko, “Genetic Discrimination, Insurance, and Solidarity: An Analysis of the Argumentation for Fair Risk Classification”, New Genetics and Society, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2010), pp. 457–475; T. McGleenan, V. Wiesing and F. Ewald (eds.), Genetics and Insurance (Oxford: BIOS, 1999); J. Mittra, “Genetic Exceptionalism and Precautionary Politics: Regulating for Uncertainty in Britain's Genetics and Insurance Policy Process”, Science and Public Policy, Vol. 33 (2006), pp. 585–600; J. Mittra, “Predictive Genetic Information and Access to Life Assurance: The Poverty of ‘Genetic Exceptionalism’”, BioSocieties, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2007), pp. 349–373; Lobo-Guerrero, Insuring Security, op. cit.; K. Armstrong, B. Weber, G. FitzGerald, J.C. Hershey, M.V. Pauly, J. Lemaire, et al., “Life Insurance and Breast Cancer Risk Assessment: Adverse Selection, Genetic Testing Decisions, and Discrimination”, American Journal of Medical Genetics, Vol. 120A, No. 3 (2003), pp. 359–364.

37. Swiss Re, Too Big to Ignore: The Impact of Obesity on Mortality Trends (Zurich: Swiss Re, 2004).

38. Munich Re, Obesity – A Challenge for Global Healthcare Systems (Munich: Munich Re, 2008).

39. See D. Laster and C. Schmidt, “Innovating to Insure the Uninsurable”, Sigma, Vol. 4 (2005), pp. 1–36.

40. See J. Simon, “Taking Risks: Extreme Sports and the Embrace of Risk in Advanced Liberal Societies”, in T. Baker and J. Simon (eds.), Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 177–208.

41. A case in point is that of ‘Allianz Global Assistance’, a provider of travel insurance and assistance solutions, which has entered into partnership with the International Space Transport Association (ISTA) anticipating the growth of space tourism. See <https://www.allianz.com/en/press/news/business/insurance/news_2011-11-15.html?search.query=international%20OR%20space%20OR%20transport%20OR%20association&search.filter=-_contentType:editorial> (accessed 24 March 2014).

42. M. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 34.

43. L. Lobo-Guerrero, “Uberrima Fides, Foucault and the Security of Uncertainty”, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2012), pp. 23–37.

44. See L. Amoore, “Vigilant Visualities: The Watchful Politics of the War on Terror”, Security Dialogue, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2007), pp. 215–232; L. Introna and D. Wood, “Picturing Algorithmic Surveillance: The Politics of Facial Recognition Systems”, Surveillance & Society, Vol. 2, No. 2/3 (2004), pp. 177–198.