Orchestrating death in contemporary France: When the juridico-medical scansion at the end of life produces new ontologies

Abstract

How does a state codify temporalities at the end of life? This article explores the ways in which French medico-administrative, institutional and legal dispositions are creating new timeframes for the end of life, new categories of patients and new frontiers between life and death. In particular, a gradual increase in formalizing the terminal phase of patients’ lives, partly distinct from the terminal stage of their illness, leads to identifying specific forms of “bare lives” around which the medical practices of biopower come to be recreated as thanatopower. The article concludes by highlighting the specific features of French governmentality of dying and how it uniquely attempts to overcome the contradictions facing all Western states involved in developing policies for prolonging life.