Discipline vs Vulnerability: A Biopolitical Look at COVID-19 Crisis Response

Abstract

Biopolitics has been widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic, to call attention to the discipline and control imposed to safeguard public health and the resultant normalization of states of exception. This limited reading of biopolitics, however, stands on a narrow understanding of politics and results in what Rancière (2004) has called disagreement (mésentente), a failure to hear or to understand. This essay explores the possibilities of reconfiguring the political and biopolitical, embracing affirmative potentials inherent in the work of Foucault (1978, 2003) and Butler (2022). It will, above all, touch on notions of vulnerability, interdependency, and care, as developed by feminist thinkers. The potential of vulnerability to reconfigure the political is also subjected to a critical lens, as it has also been successfully exploited by conservative movements (e.g., in the contexts of masculinity, marriage equality, immigration and race) to cement the power of dominant groups (Oliviero, 2018). Yet, despite this potential for cooptation, critical awareness of the recognition of the shared vulnerability as a source of agentive capacity has the potential to overcome the political impasses revealed by the COVID-19 policy response.