ABSTRACT
The rule of ‘normalcy’ has been foundational to the maintenance, regulation and production of various practices of citizenship, particularly within the post-war era in Canada and the United States of America.1 It has been an effective tool in the formation and resilience of a bourgeois techno-scientific capitalist democracy
that has informed the development of social citizenship. In multifarious ways, the modern development of social citizenship has relied upon the persistence of accepted definitions of normal, or it has acted out against the ‘normalcy’ written into laws and social and moral codes of conduct and behaviour. On the one hand, ‘normalcy’ is the unremarkable, universal and ubiquitous quality of the everydayness of life; on the other hand, normalcy is veiled and reified such that it is rendered invisible to the subject who practices normalcy. Thus ‘normalcy’ is merely normal. The act of rendering normalcy invisible is an unacknowledged practice of power. And yet, the ‘normal’ is a highly charged and contested site that is politicized through a variety of social movements and political articulations that have sought to de-naturalize the meaning of ‘normal’. Considering that the language regarding ‘normal’ versus ‘abnormal’ has been intensively revisited in various forms of social theory (for example, Foucault, 2003), it is perhaps an odd political tactic to return the gaze of social analysis back on to a consideration of the normal through the discussion of a ‘new’ normal. Rather than thinking of the appearance of the ‘new normal’ as some banal form of periodization that rigidly refers to an ‘old’ and a ‘new’ reification of the normal, what must instead be understood are the ramifications for a concept of citizenship and life in Fortress North America – a consequence identified by Giorgio Agamben as the ‘bio-political relationship between citizens and the state’ and the ‘filing away of the most private and incommunicable aspect of subjectivity . . .’ (Agamben, 2004). This development compels us to reflect and re-evaluate the renewed sets of possibilities, limits, acts of resistance and dissidence that the ‘new normal’ brings forth in the relationship between the citizen (non-citizen)2 and the state. Through the enunciation of the ‘new normal’, the question of what is left of citizenship is central to this analysis of the new codes of behaviour and articulations of the relationship between citizens (non-citizens) and the state. The ‘new normal’ is a working metaphor for a neo-liberal rationality that has
effectively displaced and dislodged the presumed unitary liberal rational citizensubject. In this paper I argue that the distinction to be made here is not that there ever existed a complete and ‘unitary’ monolithic liberal rational citizen-subject, but rather, that a neo-liberal democracy no longer requires such a subject to be interpolated through acts of governance. In North America, a neo-liberal rationality has effectively and fundamentally altered the appearance of the democratic citizen who is theoretically imbued with the capacity for a rational grasp of rights, responsibilities, individual freedom and liberty. Since the ‘new normal’ suggests alternative sets of norms, values and systems of management and control, the foundational elements of the democratic society are increasingly undermined and simply do not inform basic expectations of the everyday. In this instance, rather than viewing the birth of the ‘neo-liberal’ citizen as a rational subject, I argue that the appearance of this subject relies on the experience of anxiety, fear, and trauma. This paper examines the process through which the citizen-subject is refigured through the integration of neo-liberal social policies within the realm of the political.3 Furthermore, in this paper I trace the process of subjection that occurs through the enunciation of a ‘new normal’. With specific reference to a series of debates that have followed in the wake of the Smart Border Declaration signed
between Canada and the United States of America, I examine the evolving meaning of the production of the bio-social in this geopolitical region. Specifically, I examine the debates regarding civil liberties and the development of bio-metric identification cards and other technologies of surveillance that have appeared in the ‘new normal’. I question what sort of understanding of rights and responsibilities are required of the citizen through the enunciation of the ‘new normal’. Is the process of this new subjection leaving us at a place of anxious disengagement from the political, one that we will not recover from? How are categories that function to determine the political and various forms of acting as a citizen being recalculated through this enunciation? What are the moral and ethical claims of the new normal? In the opening epigraphs quoted above, each speaker suggests that a shift in
consciousness or awareness can now be identified as the ‘new normal’. The enunciation of the ‘new normal’ acts as a reminder that daily life has been altered in some significant ways. In each of these articulations the meaning of the ‘new normal’ is neither clear nor entirely significant. However, what is striking is its tautological function in our present political life in the geopolitical landscape of Fortress North America. While this shift from old to new articulates a sense of loss or detachment through a reference to an experience of trauma, or an experience of illness or impending crisis, by relying on the metaphor of the ‘new normal’ the event itself requires no particular meaning. However, the ‘new normal’ is not merely a sign for encapsulating an experience of the ‘everyday’ that is now established on radically altered norms. Through the altered experience of the everyday, the incitement of the ‘new normal’ is central to the practices of subjection occurring in a neo-liberal rationalization of the social and political life in Fortress North America. These pronouncements of the ‘new normal’ imply that the ‘new’ everyday is
structured through increasing levels of impediments in daily life, even though the a priori rationalization for such impediments is neither made evident nor necessarily required. In other words, the structures arrived at through the ‘new normal’ are understood by the subject as simply ones that are required for managing everyday life in a ‘risk’ society or a society at risk. This new way of being is underwritten by a sense of anxiety and the practice of managing anxiety on a daily basis. The hyper-alertness of the ‘new normal’ does not result in an improved alertness or improved circulation of mind and body, something that would be understood through an experience of ‘true enlightenment’. Rather, these articulations of the ‘new normal’ suggest a sense of fear, anxiety and impending death. In this sense, the ‘new normal’ arises out of crisis, acts on a sense of hyper-awareness and the need to be hyper-alert and is a break from foundational expectations of a daily life. Life in the ‘new normal’ is not a ‘given’ because it is anticipated that there are potentially life altering surprises or challenges hidden around the corner that require careful vigilance. The ‘new normal’ acts as a paradigmatic shift in our social and political lives. The enunciation of the ‘new normal’ is often expressed through various sites including the media, health professionals, and government officials. The ‘new normal’ acts as a powerful symbol in the arsenal of a ‘risk’ society often in the practice of ‘crisis’ management.4 In the instances
cited above, a crisis can refer to various forms of pathogens entering a relatively healthy organization or organism and altering it from within (a form of invasion): from malignant cells invading a body; to bio-organisms invading a society; to the human terror of evil invading a polity. The crisis precipitates a re-territorialization of the social, political and corporal that makes the ‘new’ – normal once again.
