‘Because of People Like You…’: Banal Politics in the Making of the Pandemic Governmentality in Italy

Abstract

At first sight, social media comments seem to be the place where anti-vaxxer discourse and mocking regularly occurred during the global pandemic. Based on an exploratory analysis of comments that were published on the social media account of the Italian Department of Civil Protection from February 2020 to December 2021, this paper argues that social media comments can also help to detect the subjectivity augured by discourses of COVID19 crisis management: the responsible subject. Drawing on governmentality studies and a social semiotic understanding of social media comments as ‘banal politics’, this paper discusses the reconfiguration of the political during and beyond the global pandemic. It looks at the reconstitution of a new political subject that emerged throughout the COVID19 crisis: the responsible, a subject who does not limit herself to following the governmental rules but also reproduces and enforces them on a molecular communication scale.