248 RüdigerKunow
public,itcreatedahistoricallynewformofcitizenship,onethatwasnot
grounded in territorial belonging, in theiussanguinis, but in the state's
sovereignty over the human body. The result was a politico-symbolic
construct for which the term "corporeal citizenship" (Gabrielson and
Parady 380) has been offered. This was a civic identity in which the
chronologyofhumanlife-in-timedeterminedtheplaceofthislifeinthe
public domain. Such positioning did not long remain merely functional
and thus neutral; towards the end of the 19thcentury in Europe, much
later in the United States, a person's aged body also became the object
not just of governance, but of good governance, a symbol and
"imaginative focus,... [and] indicator, of a caring society and of
national coherence and inclusiveness" (Biggs, "Toward Critical
Narrativity"308).
Especially after World War II and in competition with the Soviet
system, the "tutelary complex" (Donzelot 97) inside the public domain
expanded and took the shape of the "welfare state." In this historical
constellation, now pretty much a thing of the past, national identity
materialized itself—one might say embodied itself—in living bodies,
those of "old" persons. The material and symbolic identities of elderly
citizens came to be configured around a set of biopolitical institutions.
Each of these was commissioned to regulate a particular sector of elder
life, to monitor and administer rights and responsibilities. The nation
statealsotookupthetaskofmanagingtherelationsbetweengenerations
in terms of what came to be called the "intergenerational contract."
Entitlement programs for the elderly, health service and financial
support were part of an expansive (and expensive)human rights regime
which recognized the "right of everyone to social security" as defined
e.g. by the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and
CulturalRights.
In the United States, a biopolitical administration of senescence was
rather slow in coming. After initial steps during the New Deal,
especially the Social Security Act of 1935 (42 U.S. Code Chapter 7), it
was especially the Great Society program which circumscribed in
systematic fashion the civic identity of "senior citizens." Though the
variousentitlementprograms(socialsecurity,Medicare)whichemerged
during the 1960s fall drastically short of the provisions for senior
citizens established by Northern and Western European nation states,
they nonetheless defined a cohort of people through notions of civic