Splitting Women, Producing Biocitizens, and Vilifying Obamacare in the 2012 Presidential Campaign

Abstract

This article examines the 2012 Republican presidential campaign, exposing the articulation of two incongruous discourses: arguments for increasingly strict regulations on women's reproductive rights and antiregulatory attacks on Obamacare. Drawing on articulation theory and on a Foucauldian understanding of biocitizenship, we argue that women's reproductive and sexual capacities were discursively disarticulated or split from their status as free citizens and rhetorically affiliated with Obamacare as both entities came to be seen as potentially dangerous.