The Tube is My Life

How is the right wing mobilization around Terri Schiavo possible? How could it happen that Congress gets involved in this sad case, that Bush makes a big deal of flying to DC to sign the bill into law? The link between this case and pro-life anti-abortion politics is obvious. But, there must be more to it than this. So, what is it? I don't know. But, it makes me think about the connections between freedom and dependence, activity and passivity, and the ways that these connections remain gendered.

It makes no sense that people cannot tell the difference between a conscious woman and a woman who is in a vegetative state. Unless, of course, this is actually a fantasy of feminity. Terri Schiavo can be considered conscious even in her vegetative state because this continues for many to be women's ideal condition--on their backs, in bed, eyes open, uncomplaining. She is the ideal daughter, passive, compliant. And, she is visible. Her body a testimony to being female, to being feminine, life. No wonder House Republicans wanted to subpoena her to testify before Congress. This is the sort of woman they want to see, perhaps the only kind they can see, the one whose testimony matters because it is contained in an inert body.

What don't they want to see? Wounded US troops. American amputees. The wounded soldiers--arrive back in the US at night, almost as America's dirty, unacknowledged secret, protecting television viewers from the horrors to which consent daily. As journalist Mark Benjamin told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now:

One night I was very close to the delivery of wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and two soldiers, just as an example -- the soldiers arrive, as you can imagine, on stretchers. They’re unloaded out of these buses. They’re white buses that stack the wounded in the back on stretchers. They also arrive in ambulances, sometimes even in unmarked black vans, which is a very strange twist. One night, for example, I saw two soldiers unloaded from these vans that were apparently intubated, meaning they could not breathe on their own. They were sort of swollen looking, very young. I mean, to me they looked like kids, of course, and they -- in other words, there's a large machine strapped over the top of their bed and a tube into their mouth. They looked like they were totally unconscious. One of them looked like there might have been --could have been blood in a urine bag on the side of the bed. I mean, these soldiers were in very, very bad shape. I didn't even know that they could transport people overseas that couldn't even breath on their own. So we’re talking about very, very seriously wounded people coming into the United States, and we just -- we don't see them.

America, men, soldiers must be active, vital, viral (even if they need viagra, which, if tv ads are any indication, many, many do). The illusion of action must be kept alive--at all costs, keep the feeding tubes in, don't cut off or turn off the tube that keeps the illusions, the fantasy, alive.

See also the discussion of Schiavo's bulimia at under the same sun and the interesting plea for saving her life at screamer in the matrix . And, to get a sense of the engagement on this (as opposed to, say, the missing outrage on torture and the war, look at this aggregator of prolife blogs mobilizing around Schiavo remediated from Dan Gillmor.

Comments

[George W.]

A silly thought that comes to my mind on the virility issue. I remember reading an NYT article that argued that the reason the death toll is so low for Iraq is because with modern medicine, the survival rates of heavily wounded soldiers are *amazing* in comparison to conflicts like Vietnam. So a lot of people who lose an arm a lung and a kidney can now still live and *function*. Meaning that there are a *lot* of amputees coming back. Truncated, incomplete, shortened, with missing arms and legs, they are even less masculine and heroic than soldiers who were blown up. In fact, amputees, in their helplessness and need, are much to human, pathetic even – not the freedom fighters, the crusaders of modern day, that we want them to be. So could there be a bit of castration anxiety on the part of the superpower in letting those be seen by the public?

Not that we get to see the coffins either though...

[George W.]

A second thought.

Considering pro-lifers in general, yes they want to save Terry - but why are these people (with the exception of only a few genuine Christian groups) also so pro war, both in killing the enemy and our troops(and also in many cases pro death penalty)? Is that like one of those things where the obscene transgression supports the stated ideals; like in the case of racist intolerance and liberal democracy?

So although the ideal of life is held up in opposing abortion, or “saving” Terry, it stops there (and does not include money for prenatal care of childcare either), and in fact goes to the opposite extreme once we get to war or punishment. (which was also the same in 1940 Germany, that also combined anti-abortion laws with militarism)

Which I guess goes along well with the whole hypocrisy of the neo-con + evangelicals alliance. And only add more fuel to their libidinal mechanics. This reveling in blatant hypocrisy, irrationality, and transgression of your own rules. (Todd McGowan argued much the same in his point that modern conservatism is not about suppressing enjoyment, but actually protects it from superegoic consumerism.)

So I wonder…is there is any way to deflate this system of enjoyment? Could we make Christian fundamentalists have less fun playing the righteous hypocrites? How can we (the left) ruin this obscene enjoyment mechanism that seems to sustain the alliance of the new Right? If not out of jealousy at their enjoyment having, but out of practical political necessity. (although a intolerance/jealousy of the enjoyment of the rich/bourgeois other has been used to fuel revolutions before) We are losing, they are winning, and they are having fun at it. (just as we had 60 years ago with the KPD lectures vs. Nazi rallies model)

I don’t think more information will help here; or lectures, or exposing the truth of the war. As people who are enjoying these (their) inconsistencies have no reason to listen to (or make conscious) any objections, no matter how rational and factual they may be. So although the Marxist/Liberal Left may demand more openness, and more truth, given the last election, I dont this is working 9or perhaps ever did) – so what could the Psychoanalytic Left, with its different understanding of motivation and pleasure, do in matters of political strategy? What do Zizekians fight with? Billionares for Bush maybe? Or something else gleaned from therapy?

I write this mindfull of the whole "Zizek controversy" that has been jumping from blog to blog in the last week.

Can all this high-winded theory, and it does make sense when you take it seriously, be put to political practice?

[Jodi]

interesting question on theory and practice. I'm going to think about it and write something longer. for now, I'm ok with an answer that says that theory is important, that thinking about concepts, finding their limitations, looking for new ones, is crucial, that today we are burdened by concepts that are not adequate to their task, and by a dire need for new ways of theorizing, conceptualizing aspirations for social and economic justice, for finding notions adequate to former hopes.

You may recall that when Zizek was here, and he also writes about this somewhere, he said that maybe the answer to the question what should we do is nothing. Frenetic activity is just like the hamster wheel. It might be that thinking is what is to be done.

Being rather manic myself, I can't quite do this. So, I go about my pathetic, hysterical, typical little political activities AND try to do my best to think something different (which is by far the harder task for me).

[dykebag]

Terri Schiavo can be considered conscious even in her vegetative state because this continues for many to be women's ideal condition--on their backs, in bed, eyes open, uncomplaining. She is the ideal daughter, passive, compliant. And, she is visible. Her body a testimony to being female, to being feminine, life.

That's ridiculous. Certainly neo-con design for women does call for them to be passive but by no means "vegetative... on their backs, in bed". This pony show does have gendered implications; another ploy to take control of the body away from the woman. But, for the neo-con, the female body does have a function and one cannot cook while supine and man cannot fuck all day without food. I suppose your analysis is of an ideological nature and has a certain meaning in Zizek's Lacanian context; maybe I haven't read enough Lacan or Zizek to buy this hyperbole as credible in political struggle. This fantasy isn't the lived reality for most women.

[Jodi]

Fantasy isn't the same as lived reality. Fantasy plays a role in structuring lived reality. Its absence is key--is the absence a hope? a nightmare? a necessarily suppressed opposite? So, no, my claim is not that this fantasy is lived reality for most women. My claim is that there is a neo-con fantasy of woman as pure body. This is also an element in neocon opposition to abortion: the woman is both the life-support system for the fetus and the prison in which the fetus is trapped (and both of these rhetorics appear in the language of judges in the case law).

On the needing someone to cook: they can always send out for pizza. Or better, get off the woman and go out with the boys.

[Bruce L. Thiessen]

In support of Terri Schiavo, I’d like anyone who reads this who supports the life of Terri Schiavo, to have a free MP3 copy of my song of support for Terri, Portrait of Terri Shiavo’s Last Days.

Link to free MP3 copy of Portrait of Terri Shiavo’s Last Days by Dr. B.L.T. ©2005 & others.
http://www.drblt.com/freesong.htm

Bruce L. Thiessen, Ph.D.,
AKA Dr. B.L.T.
(661) 633-5110 X 283 (work)
(661) 588-5537 (home)
(661) 900-1650 (cell)