Sandesara Utpal N
Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, International Institute, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Med Anthropol Q. 2025 Jun;39(2):e12901. doi: 10.1111/maq.12901. Epub 2024 Nov 29.
Selective abortion of female fetuses is a widespread, illegal, and profoundly consequential form of family planning in contemporary India. In Gujarat state, public health campaigns against the practice rely on narratives exhibiting the hallmarks of melodrama: good-evil binaries, stock characters, emotional provocations, simplistic diagnoses, and inevitable triumphs. As biopolitical truths, such narratives resonate ethically and emotionally for people. By individualizing blame, obscuring structure, circumscribing discourse, and legitimizing authority, such narratives also exert many classic biopolitical effects. But they do not necessarily transform subjectivity or behavior, as biopower is often assumed to. Anti-sex selection messaging illustrates how moralistic, sentimentalized interventions against potentially harmful practices can provoke strong responses without changing actions. In highlighting resonance as a relevant biopolitical limit, the not-quite-paradoxes of Gujarati public health narratives-encapsulation without accuracy, regulation without discipline, authority without efficacy, participation without transformation-suggest one approach for analyzing the governance of life without falling into determinism.
在当代印度，选择性堕胎女胎是一种广泛存在、非法且后果严重的计划生育形式。在古吉拉特邦，针对这种做法的公共卫生运动依赖于展现情节剧特征的叙事方式：善恶二元对立、固定角色、情感煽动、简单化诊断以及必然的胜利。作为生物政治真理，此类叙事在伦理和情感上能引起人们的共鸣。通过将责任个体化、掩盖结构、限定话语范围以及使权威合法化，这些叙事还产生了许多典型的生物政治效应。但它们不一定像人们通常认为的生物权力那样改变主体性或行为。反性别选择信息传递表明，针对潜在有害做法的道德化、情感化干预如何能引发强烈反应却不改变行为。通过强调共鸣是生物政治的一个相关限度，古吉拉特邦公共卫生叙事中那些似是而非的悖论——不准确的概括、无纪律的监管、无成效的权威、无转变的参与——为分析生命治理提供了一种方法，使其不至于陷入决定论。
