Mediating Biopower and the Case of Prenatal Space

Abstract

This essay argues for articulation as a mediating logic for the analysis of biopower. Prenatal space, particularly as it emerged around biomedicine and abortion, is used to demonstrate this idea. Prenatal space divides life within itself, forming a heterotopia “before life” where regimes of living converge in new and sometimes threatening ways around how to reproduce ethically. However, the history of abortion indicates a general strategy for controlling the political contingencies made possible through prenatal space. Relying on modernist space-time logic, nineteenth and twentieth century physicians reduced the practice of abortion to a sign of civilization, with some physicians contending abortion befitted savagery of the past, and others contending criminalized abortion was a relic of outmoded moralism. Wanted and unwanted regimes of living were reduced spatially to representations of time and segregated on a historical scale of value. From this example it is argued that mistaking the mediation of biopolitics as essentially representational diminishes the materiality of space and mutes biopolitical analysis.

Keywords:

• space
• biopower
• abortion
• articulation
• heterotopias

Acknowledgements

The author extends his gratitude to the editors, Greg Dickinson and Donovan Conley, for asking him to participate in this special issue and for their helpful reviews and chummy emails. He thanks Eric King Watts and the CSMC editorial staff for their excellent work; it is appreciated. He thanks Barbara Biesecker and Ronald W. Greene for their instructive and thoughtful critique. Most of all, he thanks Naomi Jacobs who, without doubt, rocks.