The right to life: Human life, bio-power and the performativity of law

Abstract

This article considers the performativity of law in regard to constructing life as either human or non-human; personifying a 15-days group of cells while transforming a fully formed foetus to hospital waste. I suggest that the practice of a human rights approach to a sociology of bio-knowledge needs to attend to the contested nature of humanness and the question of how law is operationalised within power/knowledge. I argue that such an approach would include recognition of the process of the creation and the bearing of rights, especially the right to life that is based upon a particular relationship between nature and culture. Finally, I argue that law is central to constituting humanness, as human life can be paradoxically both included and excluded by law. The practice of a human rights approach to a sociology of bio-knowledge must focus on the performativity of law, as law is a tool of bio-power that regulates the right to life.