Citizenship: Biological and Technological

Looking at the posters on Thursday, especially the ones on HIV/AIDS and the one about how social media is changing the world, I was really struck by the undercurrent of 'citizenship' running through both posters. I think that something that the HIV/AIDS presentation highlighted (even if inadvertently) is the fact that citizenship is maybe not extended to all people, but is sometimes actively withdrawn from certain people. The world, under liberal individualism, has multiple doctrines of universal human rights which are generally actively undermined by the distribution of money (because we are also a neoliberal world). The neoliberal world has also impacted medicine as we read in 'Emily's Scars' but I'd argue that this is an uneven impact -- because while western bodies are "patient-consumers," other bodies are lucky to be patients at all. The South Park piece got to this point especially well -- but the piece about patents was really important too. As all kinds of different properties have become protected on a global level, it's been devastating to see the differences widen between the haves and the have-nots -- and to see that while the property of corporations is interpreted to cross all borders, the rights of individuals do not.

The poster also made me think about Nikolas Rose's notion of "biological citizenship." I don't think we covered this idea in this class but he uses this term to discuss the ways that citizenship has been expressed through concern with the vital characteristics of people. It's a broad concept that encompasses everything from hygiene and vaccinations programs to patient advocacy groups lobbying for themselves to victims of environmental disasters like Bhopal or Chernobyl positing their claims in terms of their rights as citizens. I think this concept is particularly useful in relation to HIV/AIDS because of the social stigma bit that was presented. As HIV/AIDS became an issue in the United States, it was and still is often posited as a disease impacting primarily intravenous drug abusers and gay men (who are BAD biological citizens for either refusing to properly care for their bodies or for refusing to reproduce). It's a useful concept that can help highlight why some groups have to fight a little bit harder for their own representation and programs. I think it also helps to highlight, on a global level, why corporations feel relatively safe in asserting policies that will deny people life-sustaining medications. Corporate personhood / citizenship apparently exceeds the biological citizenship of certain populations.

I think that the internet really has potential to alter this situation -- which was also addressed in the HIV/AIDS poster as many of the advocacy groups in the United States use social media extensively to promote their causes. I think that the primary focus of a lot of advocacy organizations is interesting though -- and it touches back on the question we discussed in relation to Al Gore and exactly what we can do about world issues. So many of these organizations ask us to buy certain products--which paradoxically interpellates us as privileged western capitalists even as it seeks to raise funds for people living in poverty. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a really blistering piece about the same approach in relation to breast cancer research (as a breast cancer survivor)--there is a huge disconnect between buying things and actually fixing a problem.

I think that this really touches on the limits of online activism that the social media group presented in the video -- these kind of approaches stop any kind of systematic change before it even starts. I think that these kinds of approaches undoubtedly "do good" but that they "do good" in a way that allows minimal disruption of the status quo. For example, the work of organizations like (red) or their partner organization "one" promote a kind of consumer armchair advocacy that doesn't do a lot to actually put people receiving treatment in control of their treatment. It also does not necessarily do anything to alter the material living conditions of others, other than assuring that a bare minimum standard of health is made possible.

A lot of this also invariably gets tied up with celebrity activism, which often seems really silly...which is why The Onion can write an article like "Rest Of U2 Perfectly Fine With Africans Starving" and it's also why people think that those PETA posters are stupid. One of the other impacts of social media and its use to promote causes may be that these issues almost become parodies of themselves and fade into the background. Additionally, when we have a celebrity panopticon that delights in showing us how decadent certain people are, it seems really trite when they promote causes. For example, when I saw Steve O.'s PETA poster I thought, "That dude gets kicked in the nuts for a living and spent 9 years getting wasted 24/7...why should I care what he has to say? About ANYTHING?" And I know that I've thought, "Maybe Matt Damon should STFU" more than once.

The issues of HIV/AIDS activism and social networking also connected in a strange way on World AIDS Day last year when a bunch of celebrities announced their "digital deaths" for the 'Buy Life' campaign. Reading the comment section is worthwhile because while youtube is always full of people who hate just about everything, the campaign was widely ridiculed and illustrates the ways that the combination of celebrity activism surround HIV/AIDS and social networking can backfire and be used to make issues seem less serious.