Biopolitics and the Enemy: On Law, Rights and Proper Subjects.

This article examines the operation of “enmity” in right to die legal appeals. The article asks: (1) why does the law rely on articulations of enmity to rationalize its decisions and (2) what might this tell us about how biopolitics operates in the contemporary neoliberal moment? Drawing on the insight of Roberto Esposito the article makes three key points. First, it notes that biopolitics operating in the contemporary neoliberal moment is increasingly focused on closures around individual human subjects, or what Esposito calls mechanisms of “immunization.” Second, it notes that discourses of enmity are perpetuated through legal right to die appeals that shore up these immunity mechanisms, which can partly explain why right to die claims fail on appeal. Finally, it considers more affirmative ways forward in both theory and practice relating to legal right to die appeals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]