Pub Date : 2021-03-31DOI: 10.1215/17432197-8797627
J. Beck
Abstract:The phrase "on the beach" originates as naval slang for being between assignments or unemployed and was used as the title for Nevil Shute's bestselling novel of 1957 about the last remaining survivors of a global nuclear conflict as they await their inevitable demise. The novel is about a certain kind of anxious passivity in the face of incomprehensible catastrophe, but it is also a narrative about work and idleness. As such, the idea of being "on the beach" invites consideration of the shore as a liminal space where often conflicting social and existential issues of meaning and purpose are played out. The waves of so-called beach shaming that occurred during the early months of the global coronavirus pandemic have located, yet again, the beach as a key battleground in contemporary cultural politics.
{"title":"On the Beach","authors":"J. Beck","doi":"10.1215/17432197-8797627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8797627","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The phrase \"on the beach\" originates as naval slang for being between assignments or unemployed and was used as the title for Nevil Shute's bestselling novel of 1957 about the last remaining survivors of a global nuclear conflict as they await their inevitable demise. The novel is about a certain kind of anxious passivity in the face of incomprehensible catastrophe, but it is also a narrative about work and idleness. As such, the idea of being \"on the beach\" invites consideration of the shore as a liminal space where often conflicting social and existential issues of meaning and purpose are played out. The waves of so-called beach shaming that occurred during the early months of the global coronavirus pandemic have located, yet again, the beach as a key battleground in contemporary cultural politics.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75150922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-8797557
Cera Y. J. Tan
Abstract:Taking as a starting point the challenge of containing the spread of epidemics, this article provides an oblique critique of the connections between biopolitics and contact tracing. Aligning the question of biopolitical strategies with epidemiology, the article follows the lines of continuity between containment strategies, contact-tracing technology, and circulations and networks. The uptake of mobile application surveillance by government entities to trace the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has seamlessly supplemented containment measures. Singapore's deployment of TraceTogether, an application developed by the Ministry of Health and Government Technology Agency, circumvents the use of geolocation tracking: formulating a network of infected bodies using proximity data, the population undergoes a topological change. Drawing on a tradition that acknowledges the transformative quality of technology and its implications on information societies, the article frames the enquiry within the parameters of Martin Heidegger's and Gilles Deleuze's deliberations on the ways in which technology is brought to bear on the biopolitical imaginary of a population. The technological rationality that, according to Heidegger, has gripped the entire horizon of thought is opened up for interruption wherever technology fails. In these slippages emerge spaces in which a critique of society's faults may be advanced. This article proposes a critical reading of application surveillance with a view to the biopolitical and philosophical implications of overdetermined network structures against the backdrop of contagion-related phenomena.
{"title":"Circuit Breakers and Biopolitical Strategies","authors":"Cera Y. J. Tan","doi":"10.1215/17432197-8797557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8797557","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Taking as a starting point the challenge of containing the spread of epidemics, this article provides an oblique critique of the connections between biopolitics and contact tracing. Aligning the question of biopolitical strategies with epidemiology, the article follows the lines of continuity between containment strategies, contact-tracing technology, and circulations and networks. The uptake of mobile application surveillance by government entities to trace the spread of SARS-CoV-2 has seamlessly supplemented containment measures. Singapore's deployment of TraceTogether, an application developed by the Ministry of Health and Government Technology Agency, circumvents the use of geolocation tracking: formulating a network of infected bodies using proximity data, the population undergoes a topological change. Drawing on a tradition that acknowledges the transformative quality of technology and its implications on information societies, the article frames the enquiry within the parameters of Martin Heidegger's and Gilles Deleuze's deliberations on the ways in which technology is brought to bear on the biopolitical imaginary of a population. The technological rationality that, according to Heidegger, has gripped the entire horizon of thought is opened up for interruption wherever technology fails. In these slippages emerge spaces in which a critique of society's faults may be advanced. This article proposes a critical reading of application surveillance with a view to the biopolitical and philosophical implications of overdetermined network structures against the backdrop of contagion-related phenomena.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77644339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-8797585
J. D. Derian, Phillip Gara
Abstract:Is COVID-19 our first global zombie event? The question leads to others that fall outside the decorum of official discourse, possibly because the answers reach beyond the pale of the state. Unable to understand the nature of the threat, national leaders failed early and caught on late to the need for a globally coordinated response. Coupled with a deep resistance by states to the alienation of any degree of sovereignty to international institutions, the prospect of a global solution to the zombie question remains elusive. This essay offers an interpandemic response to the novel coronavirus that cuts across borders and against the grain. The first is transnational, to identify from the parallax view of Sydney and Los Angeles emergent risks that defy single-state fixes. The second is transhistorical, to counter efforts by China and the United States to subsume a human security crisis into the narrative of an eternal Cold War. The third is transmedial, to acquire new political and cultural perspectives on the pandemic through the zombie cinematic genre, including our documentary film, Project Z: The Final Global Event. A zombie inquiry can help us understand how COVID-19 is both disease and potential cure of late and rising empires.
{"title":"Life, Death, and the Living Dead in the Time of COVID-19","authors":"J. D. Derian, Phillip Gara","doi":"10.1215/17432197-8797585","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8797585","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Is COVID-19 our first global zombie event? The question leads to others that fall outside the decorum of official discourse, possibly because the answers reach beyond the pale of the state. Unable to understand the nature of the threat, national leaders failed early and caught on late to the need for a globally coordinated response. Coupled with a deep resistance by states to the alienation of any degree of sovereignty to international institutions, the prospect of a global solution to the zombie question remains elusive. This essay offers an interpandemic response to the novel coronavirus that cuts across borders and against the grain. The first is transnational, to identify from the parallax view of Sydney and Los Angeles emergent risks that defy single-state fixes. The second is transhistorical, to counter efforts by China and the United States to subsume a human security crisis into the narrative of an eternal Cold War. The third is transmedial, to acquire new political and cultural perspectives on the pandemic through the zombie cinematic genre, including our documentary film, Project Z: The Final Global Event. A zombie inquiry can help us understand how COVID-19 is both disease and potential cure of late and rising empires.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90751017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-8797641
I. Goh
Abstract:While we disavow or renounce the virus that is ourselves in viral cultures such as a pandemic or systemic racism, we envy the viral force of others who are trending on social media. In viral cultures, we tend to think that virus is other people, forgetting our own viral potential or threat. In any case, all viral cultures make us sick; if not, we make one another sick. And when a vaccine is not available, rest is all we have at our disposal. We also tend to forget or belittle this rest. To break from viral cultures, then, this intervention calls for a general pause in human activity, which must include thinking, and which, if ever possible, would take place in common among all humans.
{"title":"Virus is other People","authors":"I. Goh","doi":"10.1215/17432197-8797641","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8797641","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:While we disavow or renounce the virus that is ourselves in viral cultures such as a pandemic or systemic racism, we envy the viral force of others who are trending on social media. In viral cultures, we tend to think that virus is other people, forgetting our own viral potential or threat. In any case, all viral cultures make us sick; if not, we make one another sick. And when a vaccine is not available, rest is all we have at our disposal. We also tend to forget or belittle this rest. To break from viral cultures, then, this intervention calls for a general pause in human activity, which must include thinking, and which, if ever possible, would take place in common among all humans.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83143951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-8797529
T. D. Sampson, J. Parikka
Abstract:This article analyzes the visual operations of contagions and their material aftereffects. Data visualizations and diagrams have played a key role in the visual culture of the contagion, and this article explores especially two recurring themes: curves and simulations. The article addresses the data diagrams that describe and predict, advise and control actions during the pandemic. The authors argue that these curves and simulations are also crucial epistemic and aesthetic occurrences that produce the long tale of the epidemic as it pertains to a variety of actions from policy making to affective responses. Furthermore, the text investigates the theme of the operational loop to help us grasp statistical curves and simulations as part of a multiscalar logic of the epidemic image and to discuss the temporal modalities of these various images and diagrams. The article also includes David Benqué's speculative diagrams of contagion loops that present an artistic response to the theoretical theme.
{"title":"The Operational Loops of a Pandemic","authors":"T. D. Sampson, J. Parikka","doi":"10.1215/17432197-8797529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8797529","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article analyzes the visual operations of contagions and their material aftereffects. Data visualizations and diagrams have played a key role in the visual culture of the contagion, and this article explores especially two recurring themes: curves and simulations. The article addresses the data diagrams that describe and predict, advise and control actions during the pandemic. The authors argue that these curves and simulations are also crucial epistemic and aesthetic occurrences that produce the long tale of the epidemic as it pertains to a variety of actions from policy making to affective responses. Furthermore, the text investigates the theme of the operational loop to help us grasp statistical curves and simulations as part of a multiscalar logic of the epidemic image and to discuss the temporal modalities of these various images and diagrams. The article also includes David Benqué's speculative diagrams of contagion loops that present an artistic response to the theoretical theme.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80644166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-8797459
B. Latour, S. Muecke
In late March 2020 Bruno Latour asked me to translate this piece, at the same time as letting me know that he was in hospital with COVID-19 This was distressing news, but he pulled through and hasn't paused to reflect on the experience in writing, as far as I know, keeping busy with the exhibition and book, Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, which was published later in the year with MIT Press This article, for which the literal translation of the title is “What Protective Measures Can You Think of So We Don't Go Back to the Precrisis Production Model?” (Latour 2020d), has been quite successful;twelve other translations listed on Latour's site is a good indication Such success may be attributable to the practical way that it responds to the acute COVID-19 crisis,
{"title":"Protective Measures","authors":"B. Latour, S. Muecke","doi":"10.1215/17432197-8797459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8797459","url":null,"abstract":"In late March 2020 Bruno Latour asked me to translate this piece, at the same time as letting me know that he was in hospital with COVID-19 This was distressing news, but he pulled through and hasn't paused to reflect on the experience in writing, as far as I know, keeping busy with the exhibition and book, Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, which was published later in the year with MIT Press This article, for which the literal translation of the title is “What Protective Measures Can You Think of So We Don't Go Back to the Precrisis Production Model?” (Latour 2020d), has been quite successful;twelve other translations listed on Latour's site is a good indication Such success may be attributable to the practical way that it responds to the acute COVID-19 crisis,","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76844738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-8797487
D. Kellner
Abstract:This article engages the contemporary crises of health, the economy, and democracy in the United States during the era of Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic. The author begins with a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump's chaotic and inept responses. The author follows with a discussion of Trump and authoritarian populism, arguing that Trump's floundering fortunes in the context of a hotly contested 2020 presidential campaign triggered his chaotic and contradictory responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, producing a crisis of democracy.
{"title":"Trump, Authoritarian Populism, and COVID-19 from a US Perspective","authors":"D. Kellner","doi":"10.1215/17432197-8797487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8797487","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article engages the contemporary crises of health, the economy, and democracy in the United States during the era of Trump and the COVID-19 pandemic. The author begins with a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump's chaotic and inept responses. The author follows with a discussion of Trump and authoritarian populism, arguing that Trump's floundering fortunes in the context of a hotly contested 2020 presidential campaign triggered his chaotic and contradictory responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, producing a crisis of democracy.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79430874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-8797515
S. Cubitt
Abstract:COVID-19 is now part of the resources out of which any future must be made. The temptation is to curl back into private misery and fatalism. The opportunity is to further the design of neonationalist, neoliberal returns to pre-1917 norms of extreme wealth, extreme poverty, and unmitigated exploitation of technical and ecological resources. The challenge is to build a future of public health, wealth, education, and environmental justice.
{"title":"Against the New Normal","authors":"S. Cubitt","doi":"10.1215/17432197-8797515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8797515","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:COVID-19 is now part of the resources out of which any future must be made. The temptation is to curl back into private misery and fatalism. The opportunity is to further the design of neonationalist, neoliberal returns to pre-1917 norms of extreme wealth, extreme poverty, and unmitigated exploitation of technical and ecological resources. The challenge is to build a future of public health, wealth, education, and environmental justice.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79850991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-8593578
C. Forth
Materially as well as metaphorically, fat is seemingly ubiquitous in Donald Trump’s America. Rather than simply a rude comment to make about someone’s appearance or capacity for self-control, the word refers to a form of matter and style of metaphor that helps structure divisions between America and the world, as well as among Americans themselves. To support this claim, this article outlines a broad cultural imagination relating to fat—a fat imaginary—that structures common global perceptions of Americans and America, as well as assessments of Trump himself. With sources traceable to traditional agricultural motifs, metaphors relating to fat often connote processes of fattening that evoke ideas about consumption, as well as devouring and animality. To see how the fat imaginary informs contemporary political discourses, the article probes the “fat American” as a consuming figure on the world stage, as well as media representations of Trump as a devouring monster.
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