ABSTRACT
There are instructive lessons on making phenomena visible to the state that can be gleaned from the very earliest states and their interactions with the lives of people who came under their ambit. Agriculture in the ancient Mesopotamia predates the rise of the earliest states by thousands of years. The so-called Fertile Crescent saw the domestication of various staple crops still grown today, including wheat, lentils, chickpeas and barley. Neoliberalism in the particular forms it takes in the modern, technologically enabled state carries forward the demand for legibility. Being relevant to the deliberations of the modern state means, being legible. But being legible means fitting into the strictures insisted upon by the state. The suffering of many who are vulnerable through their health issues, their youth or their advanced age, or their social standing – or changes in that standing – invites the question of what sort of remedies the state can or should provide.
