This paper explores how public policies have an impact on different dimensions of everyday life. Specifically we follow Carol Bacchi’s proposal regarding the effects of political discourses in three aspects: subjectification processes, limits of discourse and “lived (or embodied) effects”. This research explores this concept in relation to Judith Butler’s elaboration on vulnerability and precarity as politically induced phenomena. The paper argues that one of the embodied effects of political discourse is the distribution of vulnerability through the creation of “geopolicies” where expectations or experiences linked to (bodily) risk or safety are differently distributed. In addition, the paper studies how these “geopolicies” differentially distribute the right to live and die in line with the elaboration of necropolitics (Mbembe) and thanatopolitics (Dean).
This theoretical frame is applied to the discursive analysis of policies on abortion in Spain. This research analyses the changes in political discourse that take place when the Conservative Bill to reform the interruption of pregnancy is enacted (2013). The paper analyses subjectification processes -specially the new woman-mother construction-, how gender equality is eliminated from the debate and how social class and migrant status are reinforced as axes of oppression. Finally, this paper proposes a new way to approach intersectional studies by not only exploring processes of exclusion but also studying the ontological character of political discourse: which lives matter, which lives are excluded and which ones are driven straight out of the debate about exclusion.
