Patzke_Why_Now?

I’m going out on a limb here (and it is a total mess):

There is a ‘confabulation’ of economics and democracy. As continuous economic ‘crisis’ challenge individual wellbeing, the answer is more economic innovation, not necessarily more democracy, collaboration, or participation. In the US, history is revised to privilege for economic achievements.

Campbell states, “policy-relevant confabulations rely on a rhetoric of escalation.” In relation to her work, “the drug problem appears unmanageable yet still subject to policy-makers' manipulations.”[1] Economic risk, then, must be managed through regulation (i.e. legislation and adjudication), which focuses on maintaining an economic status quo (“business as usual”). The site of this performance of confabulation is the judiciary, specifically conflicts over intangible property.

As life science innovations are privatized, this confabulation of economic discovery/innovation merges with notions of health and healthcare. Pharmaceutical discoveries, genetic discoveries, and diagnostic tools are legally ‘turned into’ property and commoditized for the health of the population.

Economic property (whether tangible or intangible) is the form in which ‘health’ is evaluated, not as a metaphor for financial stability, but as an active monitoring of the population’s wellbeing.

[1] Campbell, Nancy. //Using women: Gender, drug policy, and social justice//. Psychology Press, 2000.