Michelle Bromberg ANTH 375 6 March 2013 Bio-power and Citizenship in a Transitioning State Since the introduction of critical

medical anthropology (CMA), anthropologists following this theory have viewed power and bodies as inseparably entwined. Baer et al., who were at the forefront of CMA theory, state, the dominant ideological and social patterns in medical care are intimately related to hegemonic ideologies and patterns outside biomedicine, referencing the work of Michel Foucault, among others (Baer et al. 2004, 37). Foucaults writings about power have had immense influence on current theories of medical anthropology. He presents a number of concepts that lend themselves well to understanding bodies in relation to power and society, such as bio-power and counter-politics. Following Baer et al.s use of Foucauldian discourse to guide their perspective, I too, draw upon his work to facilitate my examination of a modern form of bio-power. In this essay, I use Foucaults notion of bio-power as a framework for understanding governmental control and citizenship in the context of the post-Soviet politico-economic transition of Ukraine. I address how the Chernobyl explosion highlighted the dynamics of bio-power on bodies and citizenship during the countrys shift from socialism to capitalism. Building on this, I will discuss how the power that government held over its population was be transformed into a different power that benefitted (some of) the masses. These citizens of Ukraine achieved his form of power known as biological citizenship by means of Foucaults concept of counter-politics.

To commence, we must designate a working definition of bio-power. In Foucaults words, there was an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations, marking the beginning of an era of bio-power (Foucault 1978, 140). In other words, bio-power is the control held over peoples physical bodies. Bio-power portrays the body in two ways, one of which center[s] on the body as a machine: its disciplining, the optimization of its capabilities, the extortion of its forcesan anatomo-politics of the human body (Foucault 1978, 139). The other form focuse[s] on the species body, the body imbued with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes (Foucault 1978, 139). This notion of biopower is unmistakably present in the events that followed the Chernobyl explosion. Often, the elements of system that are deeply ingrained go unnoticed until the system is in flux, bringing these elements to light. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine provides such a context for examining the effects of bio-power. Once the explosion occurred and the unimaginable aftermath ensued, the hegemonic bio-power held by the Ukrainian government over its citizens bodies became starkly apparent. The explosion occurred just a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, an event that propelled Ukraine into a transition from socialism to capitalism. The decline of the Ukrainian welfare state forced its citizens to find new livelihoods and negotiate new connections to their nation-state government. In this era of conversion, the government explored new modes controlthat is, ways to exercise bio-poweras its ability to monitor its citizens was also impacted by the shift. Chernobyl put this situation on display in particular by drastically affecting the health of the citizens who were affected by the explosion. Seeking compensation and employment from a government that no longer

provided comprehensive care for its citizens, some found income by submitting to the governments body as a machine work model. Citizens could find public employment as workers in the disaster area, serving as "bio-robots" to do dangerous tasks that involved exposure to radiation. Their bodies were exploited and then thrown out (Petryna 2004, 252). While other examples of bio-power in relation to the body as a machine ideology exist in the context of Chernobyl, I focus my discussion on a different aspect of bio-power: the effects of knowledge on the power dynamics between the government and the bodies of its citizens. To understand this use of knowledge, I turn to Foucaults term knowledge-power. On a discursive level, Foucault demonstrates how the creation/possession of knowledge is so critically related to power that he orthographically represents the two concepts as one hyphenated word. Foucault relates bio-power and the surveillance of biological function as the seat of knowledge-power [as] an agent of transformation of human life (Foucault 1978, 143). Through the monitoring of bodies, institutions harness knowledge about the physical states of these bodies, and this knowledge affords power to the institutions. Later, I will also address how the concept of knowledge-power also applies to the masses, as the information created by power holders can be obtained and used as a sort of bargaining chip for power, a concept that Foucault describes as counter-politics. The Chernobyl disaster created gaps in the knowledge base of those who normally dictated knowledge-power in Ukraine. This temporary lapse in governmental power and subsequent creation of knowledge provides an example of the genesis of knowledge-power for the sake of maintaining control. After the Chernobyl explosion, the issue at stake [was] the states capacity to produce and use scientific knowledge and nonknowledge to maintain

political order (Petryna 2004, 258). Those who created and possessed knowledge, the doctors, the scientists, the engineers, and the government officials, had never encountered a situation like Chernobyl. People had been exposed to immense amounts of radiation. There were few studies from which to draw information and no historic events that could shed much light. Specialists did not know how to make an objective assessment of what had happened (Vienna 1996, quoted by Petryna 2004, 257-8). Thus, power holders scrambled to establish new policies, to discover new facts that could help organize the bodies, lest they become unruly. The formation of a verification process for sufferers and disabled bodies emphasizes how the government and its related power holders manufactured knowledge alongside the creation of control over citizens bodies. The new Ukrainian accounting of the Chernobyl unknown was part and parcel of the governments strategies for knowledgebased governance(Petryna 2004, 259). The members of Ukraines Medical-Labor Committee, which consists of scientists, doctors, and government officials, have the authority to diagnose illnesses as Chernobyl-related and provide them with documentation to qualif[y] bearers to receive compensation privileges as a result of their Chernobyl-related illness (Petryna 2004, 256). Knowledge-based governance also necessitated the designation of new disease categories such as vegetovascular dystonia which is a type of anxiety disorder, and radiophobia, which is used to diagnose feelings of fright caused by the perceived effects of radiation on the body. Thus we see examples of the control that the knowledge makers have over citizens through knowledge-based governance. In order to receive compensation for their radiation exposure, citizens bodies had to be given certain status by a state official.

Obtaining documentation to confirm that one suffers from these and other radiation-related illnesses acts as a certification that is central to claiming citizenship. Citizens have come to depend on obtainable technologies and legal procedures to gain political recognition and admission to some form of welfare inclusion (Petryna 2004, 262). Not only did citizens have to bear the consequences of a devastating economic recession throughout Ukraines political and economic transition, but they also no longer had the assistance of a welfare state at their side. Therefore, finding new ways to link themselves to their government had the potential to bring them out of economic turmoil. This connection was crucial for ensuring their rights and access to resources. The injured biology of a population has become the basis for social membership and for staking claims of citizenship (Petryna 2004, 261). If a citizen could obtain legal status as not just a sufferer but as disabled, that person could access the greatest amount of social benefits. Alternatively, those who did not qualify as either had a drastically smaller chance of obtaining any public assistance at all. The degree to which citizens were deemed invalid had a direct relation to the amount of benefits they received from the state, hence the importance of establishing a connection to the government. In this interaction between the governments power over the diagnosis of the effected population and the populations understanding of their status, we start to see the power of the citizens emerge. In Ukraine, efforts to remediate the health effects of Chernobyl have themselves contributed to social and biological indeterminacy and novel formations of power, and one of these powers is that held by the citizens (Petryna 2004, 257). Gleaning knowledge about ones exposure level from doctors who determined diagnoses was a way to ensure a tie to the government. In other words, the knowledge

created by the doctors (who were sanctioned by the government) that allowed the government to hold power over its citizens could also be used by citizens to gain dilute power in the form of access to health benefits. In this way, we see the effects of Foucaults counter-politics at work. Colin Gordon describes counter-politics as the way in which terms of governmental practice can be inverted into focuses of resistance in subject and power (Gordon 1991, abstract). Similarly, the effected population utilized the policies of the government to create power through citizenship. They used research data about their healthknowledge-power collected by power holding scientiststo assemble a biological citizenship (Petryna 2004, 263). This form of citizenship, one that is conferred through the physicality of ones body, was central to Chernobyl victims acquisition of power. They achieved this citizenship using bits of knowledge distributed by government officials and reshaping this knowledge into knowledge-power that suited the citizens. Bio-power generates a new [k]ind of counterpoliticspeople reformulate state demands on their living being for counter demand (Gordon 1991, abstract). In this way, the Chernobyl-effected citizens were able to invert bio-power into something that allowed them to hold power in the form of access to health resources provided by the state. Ironically, a critic of the Ukrainian disability compensation mechanism provided a succinct summary of the citizens use of counter-politics to establish biological citizenship. Dr. Angelina Guskova of the Institute of Biophysics in Moscow viewed the claiming of illnesses by the Chernobyl sufferers as a struggle for power and material resources related to the disaster (Petryna 2004, 256). Dr. Guskova originally delivered this statement as a jab at the bloated allowance of Ukrainian welfare support for victims (as

compared to the Russian model). However, after peeling away the derision, we see that her observation is rather astute; albeit not in the way she presumably intended it. The struggle that she notes demonstrates the process of establishing biological citizenship in this context of post-Soviet Ukraine. It encapsulates the vulnerability of citizens bodies, the states failure to fulfill the basic needs of its the public-services-starved citizens, the governments attempt to maintain control through the creation of knowledge, and the subsequent inversion of this power to provide citizens with agency through biological citizenship. For both the government and its citizensthe power holders and the masses the production and possession of knowledge was pivotal in the establishment and renegotiation of power in a situation were a precedent of knowing had not been set. In this way, Ukrainians used bio-power, knowledge-power, and counter-politics to navigate the uncharted expanse of space that unfurled after the Chernobyl explosion and the subsequent shift from socialism to capitalism. The dynamics of bio-power in Ukraine will continue to change as new knowledge is created and counter-politics are utilized by the citizens.

Works Cited Baer, Hans et al. 2004. Theoretical Perspectives in Medical Anthropology. In Medical Anthropology and the World System. Hans A. Baer, Merrill Singer, and Ida Susser, eds. New York: Praeger. Pp: 31-54. Foucault, Michel. 1978. Right of Death and Power of Life. In The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1. New York: Vintage Books. Pp: 135-159. Gordon, Colin. Abstract for Governmental Rationality: an Introduction. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. Chicago, 1991. One Decade after Chernobyl: Summing Up the Consequences of the Accident , Proceedings of an International Conference. 1996. Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency. Petryna, Adriana. 2004. Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of ChernobylExposed Populations. Osiris, Vol. 19, 2nd Series: 250-265.