Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2022.2095577
Sam La Védrine
ABSTRACT If the climate emergency’s imperative has seemingly been delayed by Covid-19, this article identifies a disequilibrium problem applied to the general economical thought of capitalism and ecology. Drawing a correlation, it offers a conceptually communist, aneconomic configuration. Addressing how current practise both privileges the human as differentiated from the non-human, and simultaneously places ontology unequally within unsustainable ecosystems, it reads several texts of Jacques Derrida. Following a summary of recent ecological and non-ecological commentaries on the formulation of aneconomy, and a given revision of Georges Bataille’s general economy, my Derrida exegesis is split between the early notion of différance, and its later concerns in post-1989 texts preceding his final seminar on sovereignty from 2001 to 2003. Concentrating on Derrida’s formulations of immunology, mutation, and inequivalence, my argument for an ecological aneconomy builds by examining Derrida’s deconstruction of oikos and the propre; a differentiation of excess and expenditure in material and idealist dialectics; his identification and subsequent expression of a proposition of irrefutable justice; and a challenge to animal-relegating presuppositions of human propriety. After Derrida, I argue for a necessarily valueless ecology, its imperative ontologically aneconomic and having no possible exception in necessitating a rethinking of the ontology of inequivalence.
{"title":"Post-COVID ecology: mutation, immunology, and inequivalence in Jacques Derrida’s aneconomy","authors":"Sam La Védrine","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2022.2095577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2022.2095577","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 If the climate emergency’s imperative has seemingly been delayed by Covid-19, this article identifies a disequilibrium problem applied to the general economical thought of capitalism and ecology. Drawing a correlation, it offers a conceptually communist, aneconomic configuration. Addressing how current practise both privileges the human as differentiated from the non-human, and simultaneously places ontology unequally within unsustainable ecosystems, it reads several texts of Jacques Derrida. Following a summary of recent ecological and non-ecological commentaries on the formulation of aneconomy, and a given revision of Georges Bataille’s general economy, my Derrida exegesis is split between the early notion of différance, and its later concerns in post-1989 texts preceding his final seminar on sovereignty from 2001 to 2003. Concentrating on Derrida’s formulations of immunology, mutation, and inequivalence, my argument for an ecological aneconomy builds by examining Derrida’s deconstruction of oikos and the propre; a differentiation of excess and expenditure in material and idealist dialectics; his identification and subsequent expression of a proposition of irrefutable justice; and a challenge to animal-relegating presuppositions of human propriety. After Derrida, I argue for a necessarily valueless ecology, its imperative ontologically aneconomic and having no possible exception in necessitating a rethinking of the ontology of inequivalence.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85362827","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 : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2022.2077399
A. de Boever
ABSTRACT This article takes as its point of departure Agamben's comments about how sovereign nation-states responded to the pandemic – by requiring people to wear masks, socially distance, work from home and live under lockdown. Agamben has characterized such measures as ‘fascist’ and has been criticized for that characterization. Against the inflationary critical value of Agamben's ‘camp’ as a paradigm to judge the political form of ‘sovereignty’, this article considers the notion of form in Agamben's work through the lens of how it has recently been revitalized in literary studies in the work of Caroline Levine and Anna Kornbluh. The article does so to distinguish between the state's response to the pandemic (on the one hand) and fascism (on the other), and to think the state's response to the pandemic as a sovereign practice of care. While the article does not dispute that some of the techniques and technologies of such a practice may resemble those of a sovereign practice of control that might, in another historical context, be the techniques and technologies of fascism, it argues that in order to effectively resist fascism one must recognize the plurality of sovereignty's forms and pursue its critique rather than its wholesale rejection.
{"title":"Giorgio Agamben's political formalism","authors":"A. de Boever","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2022.2077399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2022.2077399","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article takes as its point of departure Agamben's comments about how sovereign nation-states responded to the pandemic – by requiring people to wear masks, socially distance, work from home and live under lockdown. Agamben has characterized such measures as ‘fascist’ and has been criticized for that characterization. Against the inflationary critical value of Agamben's ‘camp’ as a paradigm to judge the political form of ‘sovereignty’, this article considers the notion of form in Agamben's work through the lens of how it has recently been revitalized in literary studies in the work of Caroline Levine and Anna Kornbluh. The article does so to distinguish between the state's response to the pandemic (on the one hand) and fascism (on the other), and to think the state's response to the pandemic as a sovereign practice of care. While the article does not dispute that some of the techniques and technologies of such a practice may resemble those of a sovereign practice of control that might, in another historical context, be the techniques and technologies of fascism, it argues that in order to effectively resist fascism one must recognize the plurality of sovereignty's forms and pursue its critique rather than its wholesale rejection.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72566237","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 : 2022-07-13DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2022.2086595
Jemima Repo, Hannah Richter
ABSTRACT As COVID-19 swept the world it also became the subject of a quickly growing body of theoretical scholarship aimed at understanding the social, political and economic implications of the ‘pandemic event’. Taking a step back, this paper draws on Deleuze and Foucault to interrogate whether, and in what way, the COVID-19 pandemic can and should in fact be understood as an event. We first offer a structured overview of existing ‘pandemic theory’ where we highlight that the productivity unfolded by the pandemic event is here either politically or ontologically fixed. Against this background, we show that, in distinct ways, Deleuze’s and Foucault’s concepts of the event caution against reifying a pandemic event. Any political force the pandemic can unfold is always made after the fact, and is contingent on what is (counter-)effectuated from the pandemic, or which discursive dispersions intersect with and unfold from it. We argue for considering the pandemic as evental rather than an event – it is made up of events, and holds the potential to produce events. For critical theory, the significance of the pandemic event is thus in the first place methodological: it gives insight to how (post-)pandemic societies are produced, and where openings for the actualization of alternatives might lie.
{"title":"An evental pandemic: thinking the COVID-19 ‘event’ with Deleuze and Foucault","authors":"Jemima Repo, Hannah Richter","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2022.2086595","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2022.2086595","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 As COVID-19 swept the world it also became the subject of a quickly growing body of theoretical scholarship aimed at understanding the social, political and economic implications of the ‘pandemic event’. Taking a step back, this paper draws on Deleuze and Foucault to interrogate whether, and in what way, the COVID-19 pandemic can and should in fact be understood as an event. We first offer a structured overview of existing ‘pandemic theory’ where we highlight that the productivity unfolded by the pandemic event is here either politically or ontologically fixed. Against this background, we show that, in distinct ways, Deleuze’s and Foucault’s concepts of the event caution against reifying a pandemic event. Any political force the pandemic can unfold is always made after the fact, and is contingent on what is (counter-)effectuated from the pandemic, or which discursive dispersions intersect with and unfold from it. We argue for considering the pandemic as evental rather than an event – it is made up of events, and holds the potential to produce events. For critical theory, the significance of the pandemic event is thus in the first place methodological: it gives insight to how (post-)pandemic societies are produced, and where openings for the actualization of alternatives might lie.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74370543","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 : 2022-06-19DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2022.2075416
E. Ingala
ABSTRACT Critique has been recently accused of not being able to respond to the challenges of our times, such as the climate emergency and the pandemic crisis. The new materialisms, which have posited themselves as a corrective to critique’s alleged overinflation of culture and language by proposing a (re)turn to matter, affirm that ours is a post-critical era. Against this diagnosis, the aim of this paper is to defend both the importance of critique for our current conjuncture and the need to rethink what it involves. Drawing from the work of Foucault, Deleuze, and Butler, I develop a specific but multidimensional understanding of critique that combats the vagueness and inconsistencies surrounding many post-critical approaches to this notion. Specifically, I suggest that critique entails (1) an enquiry into the conditions that structure, organise, and determine what can and cannot be perceived, experienced, and thought; (2) a clinical diagnosis or symptomatology of our present; (3) a political exercise of freedom; and (4) a practice of care. I conclude by showing how this conception of critique helps us to understand different dimensions of the Covid pandemic that might otherwise be ignored.
{"title":"Critique, clinic, and care in times of COVID","authors":"E. Ingala","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2022.2075416","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2022.2075416","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Critique has been recently accused of not being able to respond to the challenges of our times, such as the climate emergency and the pandemic crisis. The new materialisms, which have posited themselves as a corrective to critique’s alleged overinflation of culture and language by proposing a (re)turn to matter, affirm that ours is a post-critical era. Against this diagnosis, the aim of this paper is to defend both the importance of critique for our current conjuncture and the need to rethink what it involves. Drawing from the work of Foucault, Deleuze, and Butler, I develop a specific but multidimensional understanding of critique that combats the vagueness and inconsistencies surrounding many post-critical approaches to this notion. Specifically, I suggest that critique entails (1) an enquiry into the conditions that structure, organise, and determine what can and cannot be perceived, experienced, and thought; (2) a clinical diagnosis or symptomatology of our present; (3) a political exercise of freedom; and (4) a practice of care. I conclude by showing how this conception of critique helps us to understand different dimensions of the Covid pandemic that might otherwise be ignored.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78283028","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 : 2022-06-15DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2022.2077400
Sara R. Farris, Mark Bergfeld
ABSTRACT Workers in the realm of social reproduction – e.g. nurses, carers, cleaners, food preparation workers etc. – are considered low-skill and are poorly remunerated. During the Covid-19 crisis they have been recast as ‘essential’, leading to unprecedented praise and attention in public discourse. Nonetheless, public praise for these ‘essential’ workers so far has not translated into a commitment for higher wages and improved working conditions. In this article, we argue that skills hierarchies continue to determine labour market outcomes and social inequalities. We pinpoint that these are embedded into the logic of capitalist social relations, rather than being an expression of the features of jobs themselves. We also show how some socially reproductive sectors resist the tendency to automation precisely because of the prevalence therein of a workforce which is portrayed as un-skilled. By focussing on low-skilled workers’ engagement in various forms of labour unrest and their demands for long overdue recognition and wage rises. the article puts into question the inherited skills-lexicon according to which low-wage jobs are unproductive and lacking in skills and competence. The authors conclude that these workers’ fights for the recognition of the dignity and importance of their jobs and professions can facilitate a rethinking of the division of labour in our societies.
{"title":"Low-skill no more! essential workers, social reproduction and the legitimacy-crisis of the division of labour","authors":"Sara R. Farris, Mark Bergfeld","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2022.2077400","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2022.2077400","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Workers in the realm of social reproduction – e.g. nurses, carers, cleaners, food preparation workers etc. – are considered low-skill and are poorly remunerated. During the Covid-19 crisis they have been recast as ‘essential’, leading to unprecedented praise and attention in public discourse. Nonetheless, public praise for these ‘essential’ workers so far has not translated into a commitment for higher wages and improved working conditions. In this article, we argue that skills hierarchies continue to determine labour market outcomes and social inequalities. We pinpoint that these are embedded into the logic of capitalist social relations, rather than being an expression of the features of jobs themselves. We also show how some socially reproductive sectors resist the tendency to automation precisely because of the prevalence therein of a workforce which is portrayed as un-skilled. By focussing on low-skilled workers’ engagement in various forms of labour unrest and their demands for long overdue recognition and wage rises. the article puts into question the inherited skills-lexicon according to which low-wage jobs are unproductive and lacking in skills and competence. The authors conclude that these workers’ fights for the recognition of the dignity and importance of their jobs and professions can facilitate a rethinking of the division of labour in our societies.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74615712","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 : 2022-06-14DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2022.2054449
M. Ayyash
ABSTRACT This article examines the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine both in Palestine and globally through a decolonial lens. In dominant Euro-American discourse, the invention, production, and distribution of the vaccine is largely judged as an indicator of sophisticated and advanced health care systems and economies. The underlying premise being that the advanced, wealthy, and capable nation-states have endogenously earned the position of power and prosperity. The world’s poor nation-states are posited as the recipients of charity from these rich states only after the latter have sufficiently inoculated themselves. The entire discourse turns the question of vaccines into a series of technical questions about capabilities, facilities, infrastructure, economic purchasing power, and so on. Concealed in this discourse is a settler colonial foundation – an aspiration towards omnipresent and absolute power – which not only creates the contrast between Palestinians and Israelis, rich and poor, colonizer and colonized, but also seals a forcefully imposed settler colonial contract in which colonizing populations ensure their ability to inoculate themselves by debilitating the colonized.
{"title":"Vaccine apartheid and settler colonial sovereign violence: from Palestine to the colonial global economy","authors":"M. Ayyash","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2022.2054449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2022.2054449","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine both in Palestine and globally through a decolonial lens. In dominant Euro-American discourse, the invention, production, and distribution of the vaccine is largely judged as an indicator of sophisticated and advanced health care systems and economies. The underlying premise being that the advanced, wealthy, and capable nation-states have endogenously earned the position of power and prosperity. The world’s poor nation-states are posited as the recipients of charity from these rich states only after the latter have sufficiently inoculated themselves. The entire discourse turns the question of vaccines into a series of technical questions about capabilities, facilities, infrastructure, economic purchasing power, and so on. Concealed in this discourse is a settler colonial foundation – an aspiration towards omnipresent and absolute power – which not only creates the contrast between Palestinians and Israelis, rich and poor, colonizer and colonized, but also seals a forcefully imposed settler colonial contract in which colonizing populations ensure their ability to inoculate themselves by debilitating the colonized.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82482294","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 : 2022-06-14DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2022.2075905
Thomas Nail
ABSTRACT The term ‘COVID capitalism’ designates the ways capitalism and the novel coronavirus alter and amplify one another. In this paper, I look at four major features that characterize this relationship so far. (1) Capitalist extraction and urbanization increase exposure to new viruses. (2) Capitalism increases the spread of infectious disease. (3) COVID amplifies inequalities that benefit capitalists. (4) COVID has led to profits, bailouts, and deregulation for capitalists. The increasing frequency of COVID and other pandemics not only amplifies existing capitalist structures but feeds back into those structures and becomes an advantage to capitalism. I argue here that COVID is not a threat to capitalism but rather a mutagen altering and magnifying it.
{"title":"What is COVID capitalism?","authors":"Thomas Nail","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2022.2075905","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2022.2075905","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The term ‘COVID capitalism’ designates the ways capitalism and the novel coronavirus alter and amplify one another. In this paper, I look at four major features that characterize this relationship so far. (1) Capitalist extraction and urbanization increase exposure to new viruses. (2) Capitalism increases the spread of infectious disease. (3) COVID amplifies inequalities that benefit capitalists. (4) COVID has led to profits, bailouts, and deregulation for capitalists. The increasing frequency of COVID and other pandemics not only amplifies existing capitalist structures but feeds back into those structures and becomes an advantage to capitalism. I argue here that COVID is not a threat to capitalism but rather a mutagen altering and magnifying it.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83405989","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 : 2022-05-12DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2022.2075026
Ali Rıza Taşkale
ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is in threefold. First, it focuses on the workings and operations of the biopolitical economy. Second, it explores how the pandemic has exposed the thanatopolitical tendency of neoliberal capitalism, particularly in the form of herd immunity. Herd immunity deploys death as one of the instruments, making plain that the valuation of life is based on its sacrificability to capital. The final part engages with Roberto Esposito’s affirmative biopolitical perspective that strives to avoid the thanatopolitical tendency Agamben (over-)emphasized. I claim that while Esposito’s affirmative biopolitical perspective puts pressure on the thanatopolitical position, it could nevertheless be invoked for the reconstitution or reconceptualization of the future commons.
{"title":"The biopolitical economy of the COVID-19 pandemic and the possibilities for an affirmative biopolitics","authors":"Ali Rıza Taşkale","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2022.2075026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2022.2075026","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is in threefold. First, it focuses on the workings and operations of the biopolitical economy. Second, it explores how the pandemic has exposed the thanatopolitical tendency of neoliberal capitalism, particularly in the form of herd immunity. Herd immunity deploys death as one of the instruments, making plain that the valuation of life is based on its sacrificability to capital. The final part engages with Roberto Esposito’s affirmative biopolitical perspective that strives to avoid the thanatopolitical tendency Agamben (over-)emphasized. I claim that while Esposito’s affirmative biopolitical perspective puts pressure on the thanatopolitical position, it could nevertheless be invoked for the reconstitution or reconceptualization of the future commons.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73546596","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 : 2022-05-09DOI: 10.1080/1600910x.2022.2057561
M. Jauho, Ilpo Helén
{"title":"Citizenship by vitality: rethinking the concept of health citizenship","authors":"M. Jauho, Ilpo Helén","doi":"10.1080/1600910x.2022.2057561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910x.2022.2057561","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72474621","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 : 2022-05-09DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2022.2054450
Dhriti Shankar
ABSTRACT Bodily safety during the post-covid ‘new normal’ is a fraught, but phantasmal notion, subject to manipulation by both institutional and non-institutional power structures. Looking at the Indian context, a queerer understanding of the pandemic is required at a time when bodily relations have been queered by numerous instances where new forms of non-economic social stratification are discernible. Bodies are getting targeted, otherized, and discriminated against in unpredictable ways while imagining and negotiating the modalities of the new norm. Medicalization of the everyday at this massive scale does not follow the biomedical logic but seeks to normalize heterogenous responses based on irrational fears perpetuating ableist myths about the normal body. Queer activism and praxis need to play an interventionist role in shaping policies cognizant of the new threats and challenges that are being faced by queer individuals in such a scenario. Queer identities need to be reconfigured for continued sustenance, support, and political relevance. The case of the Hijrah community in India is studied as an example where a new political language is needed for revamping their mode of protest in response to the shift in the current body politics.
{"title":"Redefining ‘safe bodies’: queering the shifting body politics during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Dhriti Shankar","doi":"10.1080/1600910X.2022.2054450","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2022.2054450","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Bodily safety during the post-covid ‘new normal’ is a fraught, but phantasmal notion, subject to manipulation by both institutional and non-institutional power structures. Looking at the Indian context, a queerer understanding of the pandemic is required at a time when bodily relations have been queered by numerous instances where new forms of non-economic social stratification are discernible. Bodies are getting targeted, otherized, and discriminated against in unpredictable ways while imagining and negotiating the modalities of the new norm. Medicalization of the everyday at this massive scale does not follow the biomedical logic but seeks to normalize heterogenous responses based on irrational fears perpetuating ableist myths about the normal body. Queer activism and praxis need to play an interventionist role in shaping policies cognizant of the new threats and challenges that are being faced by queer individuals in such a scenario. Queer identities need to be reconfigured for continued sustenance, support, and political relevance. The case of the Hijrah community in India is studied as an example where a new political language is needed for revamping their mode of protest in response to the shift in the current body politics.","PeriodicalId":42670,"journal":{"name":"Distinktion-Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91370875","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}
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