Biopolitics, Occupational Health and State Power: The Marginalization of Sick Workers in China

Abstract

This article endeavours to address the experience of Chinese workers with occupational disease as an instantiation of Agamben's notion of homo sacer – the ultimate biopolitical subject whose life is located outside the “normal” political, economic and cultural practices and, hence, is rendered largely silent and unintelligible in the public realm. It argues that the victimization of the occupationally sick worker has become almost a blind spot at the centre of governmentality insofar as the specific set of social regulations and power relations has created a “double ambivalence” among the victims who are constantly and disturbingly caught in between the public and private, the productive and unproductive, and the culturally normative and the culturally deviant. Such experiences of marginality contribute to the understanding of the biopolitical nature of contemporary Chinese state power, which adopts extensive “stability maintenance” (weiwen) measures to reduce resisters to a state of “bare life” susceptible to the rule of exception.

摘要

本文致力于探讨中国职业病患者的经历, 为阿甘本 (Agamben) 关于 “神圣之人” (homo sacer) 的论述提供了一个实例: 作为最典型的生物政治个体, “神圣之人” 被排斥在常规的政治、经济和文化活动之外, 几乎完全从公共领域消失。作者认为, 职业病患者的遭遇是中国政府治理核心之中的一大盲点, 即一套特定的社会规范和权利关系, 使职业病患者陷入共公与私人、有劳力与无劳力、顺应与违背文化规范的 “双重矛盾” 之中, 受到持续不断的伤害。研究职业病患者的边缘化有助于理解当代中国国家权力在生物政治意义上的本质, 即采取多种 “维稳” 手段, 使对抗者成为 “赤裸生命” (bare life), 沦为例外规则的受害者。