190 RüdigerKunow
especiallythosewithanon-normativebiologicalmake-up,obtainingthe
status of undesirables, "disposable, an unnecessary burden on state
coffers, and consigned to fend for themselves" (Giroux 174; Sassen 4,
9).
A new biopolitical red line is thus being drawn by neoliberal
governance so that different stages and states in the life course of its
populationsarenolongeraddressedintermsoftheirneedsbutratherof
"exacerbating budget pressures" (United States,PathtoProsperity39).
The Republican Party's 2013 Budget Resolution, drafted by House
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis), former Chair of the House Budget
Committee, sees thePath to Prosperity(as the proposal is judiciously
called) jammed by "billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse in the
Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, and Disability
Insurance programs" (Unites States, Path to Prosperity 33). Even
though little or no proof is presented for this assertion—repeated
endlessly by media outlets on the political right—there is no denying
that misspending does occur in programs for the elderly, for ill or
disabledpeople.Ontheotherhand,theconstantassociationofless-than-
perfect human beings with waste of money (while leaving misspending
and waste in the military largely unmentioned) is a form of public
relations and a (decidedly non-Foucauldian) biopolitics which re-
positions non-normative biologies in a socio-cultural exclave where, in
thewordsofAngelaDavis,"democracyhaslostitsclaims"(124).
This adds a new dimension to Canguilhem's insight that norms are
inherently polemical, and that they "negatively qualif[y]" (239). Not
onlyarepeoplewhosebiologiesfailthenormbecomingthetargetsofan
incessant polemics which casts them in the role of cheats and sponges,
they areatthe same time chargedwith impairingthehealth ofthe body
politic of the nation, the body politic here understood in terms of
economicperformanceandefficiency.Thisisreflectedinthecomplaint
voiced by a woman suffering from bouts of mental illness: "I am
oppressedasawomaninthissocietyandtreatedevenlessfavorablyasa
lesbian woman. But as a 'mad' lesbian woman I am treated like the
ultimate threat to patriarchal society—a scourge in the community or a
contamination.. ." (qtd. in Berger 39). These matters are not merely
policy issues; the neoliberal record so far offers incontrovertible
evidence that encounters between the biologically normative and the
non-normativeworkinwayswhichpositionhumanlifeandlifechances