Jorge Castillo Seminary part II. State, Prehension, Community

What is the state? It is the modern Leviathan Hobbes? The emphasis on results over process and its relationship with neoliberalism. The state does not exist, or at least not previously, but is the result or it appears after certain rationality of how to govern, it is the expression of a correlate of specific political practices (eg, nowadays the sovereign is oneself about itself).

"Whatever-thing" based on evidence: endorsed by using indicators / Approved and supposedly valid, best, obeying certain interests like being economically profitable, etc. In Chile: government based on the evidence (and other countries such as USA).

Government of oneself and neoliberalism in Foucault: Where it fits into the State / Government of Chile currently form ???? We understand and we govern ourselves through and from these indicators given by the government based on the evidence (in this case, about the realm of health), looking for those results of these indicators.

Multiple government: A thing is a product of joining interests. Refers to a assamblage of several processes that make it possible. The human elements are the result of measurement, and the indicators creation. The government is based on objects that affect not only the citizens, but to the very people who create these processes (experts, politicians.

Indicators as creators of realities (eg. The homoparental family emerges on the public policy when the census added a question about same-sex couples with children).

Power as prehension (Whitehead):  Displacement of the social to the community as a place where power is produced by, for example, empowerment (people become active in their own government people, relationship of loyalty and responsibility towards the close ones with whom one's destiny is associated).

Attention focused  on poverty. Policies are developed for certain people, for the government of certain people. People who triumphed govern themselves and they do not need to be governed by another. So you just have to govern the poor through community empowerment through intervention as of government. Power as an accepted and normalized is sought and pretended, but not imposed. Everyday practices are captured by own people in the comunity, from a symmetrical plane.

Therefore, a spread between empowerment and healthcarism occurs, the technical elements mediate and translate the identity of the actors. 

Prehension relations: Reality becomes from the assciation of current entities that prehen and are prehended by others. Undifferentiated materiality. Each prehension has 3 elements: 1) Prehended subject (person, thing that can produce effect), concrete element prehended, captured. 2) the Datum is prehended, perspective of the initial datum, the feel of the datum. 3) Subjectively, how the subject prehends the datum, the effect prehensión

The power in the case explained by Jorge would be understood as a way of prehension. rather than coercion or imposition. Power arises as a result of progressive composition of relations and possibilities. Power emerges as a result of heterogeneous associations.

Photo Credit: Guian Bolisay

Jorge Castillo Seminary part I. Cancer, biopolitics and subjectivation

This week we attended to the Jorge Castillo-Sepúlveda seminary about Govermentality, Biosociality and Biopolitics. Here you can read the first part of our report:

Evidence. Differences between the representational framework vs etymological meaning ( "what is evident, making something in one or more contexts).

Evidence about life:

-Origin of the shown work: Technoscientific scenarios for diseases in Catalonia . Importance of protocols and guidelines. Implications for patients  and experience configuration in the biomedical network.Cancer (object, not just the patient), also takes actions that influence patient decisions (whether they are treated or not, emotions, etc.). Result: The evidence-based medicine sets its own standards of objectivity. Ensambka disease in a new socio-technical grammar.

Medicine based on evidence (MBE) is a medicine based on knowledge and tested diagnostics (the knowledge is valid if it is test internationally in different trials). They are specified in protocols and guidelines. Cambrosio: the objective is included in a guideline or protocol, because it has been well established arbitrarily. The real is that which depends on certain regulations. The MBE changes medicine: it realigns biology and medicine, creating what we know as biomedicine. Health-pathology debate is reconfigured according to the provisions of a number of propositions enrolled in clinical guidelines.

The context is very different between Chile and Catalonia: the neoliberal framework ban medical protocols to be applied because this "cuts" the free exercise of their profession. In addition, it is impossible without the intervention of private companies. Disease in Chile, is what protocols and guidelines grounded in MBE say. Health is to access to minimum benefits and guarantees. The citizen becomes a consumer and he is not a patient anymore. It does not guarantee health, but technology, quality, performance (if it is not proved by evidence it is not collected as health).

Guarantee vs warranty. The first is the formal assurance that certain conditions are met. The second is the written guarantee that promises to replace or repair an item (the person is a body that must be replaced or repaired certain elements). Redefinition of the relationship between public and private. The State does not monitor the health market, but creates his own one, as well that it is powered by State in relation to the allocation of certain rights to citizens.

"GES diseases" (diseases gathered in a protocol by the Chilean State, that are state-funded) are different from "non-ges diseases". Differing modes of access to health systems. The subject of law becomes consumer: the concept of citizenship is redefined. 

Subjectivity (Latour interface, something which registers certain experiences. Connections that an entity of human character learns to register. Agency distributed between humans and non-human (Artur Leal)). Regulations redefine the notion of pathology. Protocols relocate the body and distribute it among many different actors and organizations that register their properties and then invest this knowledge about it. In this moment arise vitality regimes: truths that govern how we manage our own lives and how we meant by ourselves.

Embodiment: incarnate expression of disease. Having a body is the ability to affect and be affected. Corporealization of pathology is the process by which a biomedical proposal establishes certain conditions affecting the person.

Biopolitics to biogubernamentality. Biosociality (forms / social practices arising from a  biological feature, knowledge or concern).

"Ges" as a governmental expression of life through its protocols and the promoting of biosociality. Biogubernamentality, then, rules at the basis on the biomedical strategies, creating biomedical subjects and biomedical forms to understand ourselves. Moreover, beyond the proper sphere of biomedicine and go beyond.

Photo Credit: Eric Gjerde

New open seminary by Jorge Castillo: Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Governamentality: Socio-Technical Associations in the Health and Illness Government

Next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, our colleague Jorge Castillo, arrived from the Psychology School of the Santiago de Chile's University, will explain some ideas about his current work and research. The title of this seminary is "Biopolitics, Biosociality, and Governamentality: Socio-Technical Associations in the Health and Illness Government". The meeting will be in Spanish, from 16:00 to 20:00, and is open to anyone who wants to come (Martín Baró's Room, Social Psychology Department, UAB).

Here we offer a little abstract about the topics and ideas that Jorge will explain:

The seminary is adressed to researchers whose project is related with the concept of bio-governmentality in order to understand the relationships between a) recent political

institutional formations, b) the development of technologies in biomedical knowledge on various socio-economic scenarios, and c) subjective and personal productions. For this, we propose the three thematic approach, each considering a case study:

Table of Contents.

Day 1 social studies of biomedicine.

a) Science, Technology and Society: semiotic approaches to the study of materials biomedical activities .

b) Micropolitics of normality: a case study of cancer in Barcelona.

Day 2. Evidence-based policy and power as prehension.

a) Modernization and political scenarios.

b) Case Study: power and evidence-based policies.

Day 3. Biogovernmetality.

A) From biopolitics to biosociality.

b) Case study: obligation schemes, somatocracy and acceleration in the system Explicit Guarantees in Health from Chile.


Finally, we offer his main milestones as researcher (in Spanish):


Jorge es psicólogo por la Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Máster en Investigación en Psicología Social y Doctor en Psicología Social por la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, con la tesis “Oncología y ontología, un análisis semiótico-material del cáncer”, que analiza desde la teoría del actor-red, las implicancias de la articulación de tecnologías y prácticas biomédicas en le redefinición del significado socio-material de la enfermedad. Desde marzo de 2013, se desempeña como Profesor Asistente en la Escuela de Psicología de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

Sus ámbitos de interés se relacionan con los tipos de gobierno sustentados en procesos de índole biológica, y su relación con prácticas y procedimientos biomédicos. De manera más específica, su labor se ha especializado en realizar descripciones de diagramas biopolíticos y modos contemporáneos de gubernamentalidad.

Actualmente, es investigador principal del proyecto PAI Nº 791220018, relacionado con la 
performatividad de las políticas basadas en la evidencia en Chile, e investigador responsable del proyecto Fondecyt de Iniciación en Investigación Nº 11140590, titulado “Aportes de los Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología a la comprensión de enfermedades abordadas por la medicina basada en la evidencia: regímenes de subjetivación, corporización y biosocialidad en el GES”, ambos financiados por la Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica de Chile (CONICYT).

Photo Credit: Shawn Campbell