This project takes up the regulatory tool Value of Statistical Life (VSL) to analyze the debilitating processes of aggregation of life under the guise of the sanctity of individual life. The first chapter outlines the historical processes of economization, neoliberalization, and hegemonic rationality to explain how the VSL came to be. In the second chapter, I use the case study of Cancer Alley, a large stretch of land in Louisiana that is subjected to high rates of cancer, to demonstrate the discursive impacts of the tool. Specifically, I understand the residents of the area as those deemed to be the surplus, or statistical, lives invoked by the VSL. The third chapter centers the fetus, as individual, and the unborn, as aggregate, to explain pro-life rhetoric as attempts to guarantee the nation's economic future. I argue that the abstraction of life as statistical allows for the ongoing value extraction of the at-risk population, though it is justified by the supposed sanctity of individual human life.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 33839