In tempi di pandemia anche il pensiero critico deve interrogarsi su come sta cambiando il mondo. Quali categorie politiche, economiche e sociali possono essere utili per analizzare l’impatto del Covid-19 sugli spazi urbani, l’organizzazione del lavoro, le catene globali del valore, il progetto neo-liberale, gli equilibri geopolitici su scala mondiale, le forme di lotta e i soggetti resistenti?
Into the Black Box curerà in questo periodo una lista settimanale di letture utili per interrogarsi attorno a tutti questi nodi.
Qua tutte le reading list.
In times of pandemic, even critical thinking has to question how the world is changing. Which political, economic and social categories can be useful to analyze the impact of Covid-19 on urban spaces, work organization, global value chains, the neo-liberal project, geopolitical balances on a global scale, forms of struggle and resistant subjects?
Into the Black Box will be producing a weekly list of readings during this period, which will be useful to ask questions about all these issues.
Here are all the reading lists.
Economics
Coronavirus has lit the fuse on a time bomb in China’s economy: debt
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3078018/coronavirus-has-lit-fuse-time-bomb-chinas-economy-debt
Beijing has a tough choice to make: tolerate an unprecedented hit to the economy or go for massive stimulus and risk explosive consequences. It should beware, a financial virus can be every bit as toxic as a biological one.
Steve Keen – Coronavirus Brutally Exposes the Fallacies Underlying Neoclassical Economics and Globalisation
https://braveneweurope.com/steve-keen-coronavirus-brutally-exposes-the-fallacies-underlying-neoclassical-economics-and-globalisation
The coronavirus has been the result of excessive human pressure on the biosphere. But its severity is the result of human greed and ignorance.
Ortodoxia económica y crisis civilizatoria
https://rebelion.org/ortodoxia-economica-y-crisis-civilizatoria/
No es necesario un terremoto para derribar un castillo de naipes: basta un exceso de peso aquí o una leve corriente de aire allá. Basta, en otras palabras, una eventualidad. La pandemia de COVID-19 no ha sido esa eventualidad para el caso del castillo de naipes de nuestra civilización: las cartas llevaban medio siglo cayéndose, y lo hacían cada vez más deprisa.
Deficit Lessons for the Pandemic From the 2008 Crisis
https://prospect.org/economy/deficit-lessons-pandemic-2008-crisis/
Economics is sometimes defined as the science of scarcity. If resources are scarce, it would seem, a country can’t print money, give it to someone, without consequences: There will be inflation, and those receiving the money will get resources at the expense of others. But Keynes put the lie to this reasoning, pointing out that often the economy is not using all available resources, and giving more purchasing power to some individuals may result not in inflation, but in higher levels of production and prosperity. Keynes was right, but left a number of questions unsettled: how do we know when all resources are fully utilized? Is there a clear demarcation? Will inflation set in while there may still be some underutilized resources?
Pandenomics: a story of life versus growth
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/pandenomics-story-life-versus-growth/
The clash between business-as-usual economics and the pandemic shows what we really need from our economy.
Politics
Fuerza mayor, fuerza de ley, fuerza de trabajo
https://www.elsaltodiario.com/coronavirus/fuerza-mayor-fuerza-de-ley-fuerza-de-trabajo
¿Vamos a ser capaces de encarnar el común de las fuerzas de trabajo confinadas? ¿Vamos a ser capaces de señalar la dualidad irreconciliable entre las exigencias de su cuidado y su reproducción y las exigencias de la ganancia y la renta parasitarias?
Two Timelines of Covid Crisis
https://lpeblog.org/2020/04/05/two-timelines-of-covid-crisis/
So how did we get here? It’s critical, in the midst of the COVID crisis, to keep two timelines of missteps and mistakes in mind. There are short-term problems that have only emerged in 2020. And there is a much longer history of disinvestment (and poor investments) in American health care
Explosion of Authoritarianism and Labor Struggles in Italy’s ‘War on Corona’
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/krystian-woznicki/blog/060420/explosion-authoritarianism-and-labor-struggles-italy-s-war-corona
In Italy’s ‘war on corona’ not only authoritarianism but also labor struggles are exploding. The latter brings to the fore the question of what and who is of systemic relevance, and hence “esstential” for overcoming the crisis and rebuilding the world afterward. Magdalena Taube and Krystian Woznicki discuss this key issue of the SILENT WORKS project with the scholar-activist Niccolò Cuppini.
Covid-19 y el espacio de la protesta
https://vientosur.info/spip.php?article15821
Como en las grandes revoluciones, la pandemia impone su propio calendario. De ahí que parezcan tan lejanas las protestas que, desde Hong Kong hasta Chile, pasando por Irán, Italia, Francia, Ecuador, El Líbano o Haití, entre otros lugares, atravesaron el globo en 2019. Las imágenes de las calles y plazas desiertas se extienden como un filtro vintage sobre el recuerdo de manifestaciones y revueltas que exigían democracia, justicia distributiva o ambas cosas a la vez. Al mismo tiempo, la ubicua presencia de las fuerzas de seguridad nos resulta demasiado familiar, como si no mediaran apenas distancias entre el presente escenario y el de la represión del desorden público ¿cómo interpretar esta disonancia? Que la crisis sanitaria ha producido un cambio en la percepción social de la labor de las fuerzas de seguridad en los más variados extremos del espectro político parece evidente, pero ¿queda algún espacio de legitimidad para la pregunta por las relaciones entre la represión de la protesta urbana y la securitización de la salud pública? ¿Son acaso los virus, necesariamente, contrarrevolucionarios?
Is This a Dress Rehearsal?
https://critinq.wordpress.com/2020/03/26/is-this-a-dress-rehearsal/
The unforeseen coincidence between a general confinement and the period of Lent is still quite welcome for those who have been asked, out of solidarity, to do nothing and to remain at a distance from the battle front. This obligatory fast, this secular and republican Ramadan can be a good opportunity for them to reflect on what is important and what is derisory. . . . It is as though the intervention of the virus could serve as a dress rehearsal for the next crisis, the one in which the reorientation of living conditions is going to be posed as a challenge to all of us, as will all the details of daily existence that we will have to learn to sort out carefully. I am advancing the hypothesis, as have many others, that the health crisis prepares, induces, incites us to prepare for climate change. This hypothesis still needs to be tested.
Le confinement des droits. Épidémie et guerre sociale
https://www.contretemps.eu/droit-travail-covid19-guerre-sociale/
A l’issue du conseil des ministres du 25 mars 2020, Muriel Pénicaud a commis un de ses fameux lapsus, évoquant une période de « confinement des droits ». On ne saurait mieux caractériser le traitement réservé aux droits des salarié·e·s au prétexte de l’urgence sanitaire. L’ordonnance du 25 mars « portant mesures d’urgence en matière de congés payés, de durée du travail et de jours de repos » en constitue un axe essentiel, mais non le seul. Non content de réécrire un pan entier du code du travail, le gouvernement s’est également attelé à confisquer l’interprétation du droit en vigueur et à court-circuiter les institutions que peuvent mobiliser les travailleurs·ses, notamment l’inspection du travail.
COVID’s borders: between peer-to-peer surveillance and the “common good”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/covids-borders-between-peer-to-peer-surveillance-and-the-common-good/
The vocabulary of war contributes to concealing the differential impact of COVID, which has just found its first victims in the overcrowded refugee camps in Greece.
Epidemic Philosophy
http://somatosphere.net/2020/epidemic-philosophy.html/
Can a virus ever prompt good philosophy? Within weeks of its emergence, SARS-CoV-2 was galvanizing celebrity European philosophers and social theorists, most of them men in a vulnerable age demographic, to reflect publicly and plentifully on the meaning of the pandemic. These days, it seems, an epidemic demands urgent philosophical inquiry, and lots of it—personal protective equipment for the mind, perhaps. But like much rushed PPE, it can turn out shoddy and defective.
Governance and Social Conflict in a Time of Pandemic
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2020/04/09/governance-and-social-conflict-in-a-time-of-pandemic/
Workers in the healthcare, food, sanitation, retail and public transportation sectors increasingly resist being sent to slaughter and are staging various kinds of protests to remind the rest of the world that celebrations of the new working class heroes are not enough: they are no martyrs to be sanctified, they want protections and better working conditions and wages.
Pandemics and Political Violence
http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2020/04/08/pandemics-and-political-violence/
Recent posts on Political Violence At A Glance have highlighted the connections between COVID-19 and weakening civil liberties protections, as well as the militarization of police forces in countries around the globe. A closely related question is what effects the COVID-19 pandemic might have on social and political violence. Pandemics are not political actors, and they cannot themselves instigate conflict. Nevertheless, the conditions they create—and the ways states respond—can lead to unrest and violence.
Begin from the Beginning: Revisiting Agamben (Critique in times of Corona)
https://criticallegalthinking.com/2020/04/09/begin-from-the-beginning-revisiting-agamben-critique-in-times-of-corona/
The overcharged attacks on Agamben don’t come as a surprise. Since we are amidst a pandemic, there is an urgency palpable in people’s writings. For a reader of Agamben, it should be clear not to place an unfair burden on a philosopher who primarily deals with metaphysics to be read as offering a political program. Yet, commentators are more concerned with his apparent ‘undermining’ of the present crisis save for a few. There was much outrage about how he called the State’s response to contain the virus, an ‘overreaction,’ as if his guilt lies only in his short-sightedness and is just wrong due to his denial and refusal to seriously condemn the state we are all in.
House
‘We Want a Rent Strike Now’: the People Poised to Take on Their Landlords
https://novaramedia.com/2020/04/04/we-want-a-rent-strike-now-the-people-poised-to-take-on-their-landlords/
The government has announced a three-month mortgage holiday for property owners, but is yet to announce rent suspensions – despite the fact many have lost much or all of their income. The only concrete government guidance related to renters is a three-month eviction ban, after which point landlords are free to evict tenants and start proceedings on rent arrears. With rent still an obligation, many tenants face pressure to circumvent public health advice and go out to work, if they are able to find any. Currently, the London Renters’ Union (LRU) is calling for the government to suspend all rent payments immediately in order to protect public health and prevent an eviction and rent arrears crisis after the lockdown.
Airbnb has been rocked by COVID-19. Do we really want to see it recover?
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/airbnb-has-been-rocked-covid-19-should-it-be-allowed-recover/
It’s time to consider alternatives to the profit-driven models of platform capitalists.
Airbnb may become obsolete depending on recovery of tourism after Covid-19 crisis
https://theprint.in/economy/airbnb-may-become-obsolete-depending-on-recovery-of-tourism-after-covid-19-crisis/394346/
Bookings on Airbnb slumped from 96% to 41% this year due travel restrictions imposed by many countries in view of the pandemic.
El confinamiento ‘saludable’: ¿un privilegio de clase?
https://www.elsaltodiario.com/coronavirus/confinamiento-saludable-privilegio-clase
En tiempos como estos, es necesario recordar cuan afortunados somos los que gozamos de privilegios
Data
Big Data, radicalità e accelerazioni da Covid-19
https://ilmanifesto.it/il-problema-non-sono-i-big-data-ma-il-capitalismo-della-sorveglianza/
Sorveglianza e diritti. È in questo spazio di attesa, di emergenza non ancora «normalizzata», che si annidano i bisogni di radicalità: non basta dire «no», «forse», «sì ma», serve pensare a mettere in discussione l’intero sistema su cui poggia l’estrazione e l’utilizzo dei Big Data, la vita delle piattaforme e quella dei lavoratori che hanno come compito principale quello di nutrire le macchine di dati
Coronavirus and the Future of Surveillance
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-04-06/coronavirus-and-future-surveillance
The novel coronavirus pandemic is causing tens of thousands of deaths, wreaking economic devastation, leading to lockdowns across much of the world, and upending societies and their assumptions. But going forward, one of its most significant legacies will be the way that the pandemic dovetails with another major global disruption of the last few years—the rise and spread of digital surveillance enabled by artificial intelligence (AI).
Covid-19: the race to create privacy-focused contact tracing tools
https://www.computing.co.uk/analysis/4013682/covid-19-race-create-privacy-focused-contact-tracing-tools
As authorities seek technological solutions to the pandemic, experts fear the consequences for civil liberties
We Mapped How the Coronavirus Is Driving New Surveillance Programs Around the World
https://onezero.medium.com/the-pandemic-is-a-trojan-horse-for-surveillance-programs-around-the-world-887fa6f12ec9
At least 28 countries are ramping up surveillance to combat the coronavirus
Geography
The Geography of Coronavirus
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/04/coronavirus-spread-map-city-urban-density-suburbs-rural-data/609394/
What do we know so far about the types of places that are more susceptible to the spread of Covid-19? In the U.S., density is just the beginning of the story.
The Coronavirus Class Divide in Cities
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/04/coronavirus-risk-jobs-essential-workers-data-class-divide/609529/
Places like New York, Miami and Las Vegas have a higher share of the workforce in jobs with close proximity to others, putting them at greater Covid-19 risk.
18 lessons of quarantine urbanism
https://strelkamag.com/en/article/18-lessons-from-quarantine-urbanism
To what world will we reemerge after the distress and devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic? Calling for a geopolitics based on a deliberate plan for the coordination of the planet, design theorist and The Terraforming Program Director Benjamin H. Bratton looks at the underlying causes of the current crisis and identifies important lessons to be learned from it.
China’s Global Reach: Urban Social Lives of the More-than-Human
https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/chinas-global-reach-urban-social-lives-of-the-more-than-human
The genesis and spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 have transformed urban social life across the world. In this essay, I show how COVID-19 epitomizes but does not exclusively define global reach of China’s cities, which is weaving new interconnections between humans and non-humans, including viruses and endangered wildlife. Through exploring the cultural politics of taste surrounding wild and endangered ocean fare, I illustrate how sourcing to satisfy China’s urban demand exacerbates ocean wildlife populations. Finally, I reflect on how the emerging pandemic is transforming urban life in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region. These lenses bring into sharp relief the entanglements of urban China’s global reach with more-than-human worlds.
The city will survive coronavirus
https://blog.oup.com/2020/04/the-city-will-survive-coronavirus/
In a recent essay, New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman asked “Can City Life Survive Coronavirus?” It seems an apt question in this extraordinary time of mandated retreat from public life. City streets and spaces normally teeming with people are nearly deserted now, evoking scenes from a Terry Gilliam film. In an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 we have shut down the sites where the rituals of daily urban life unfold, “third places” like cafes and bars and community centers. We are increasingly isolated in our homes, turning even Manhattan into something akin to a suburban cul-de-sac. “Pandemics are anti-urban,” writes Kimmelman, “preying on our human desire for connection.” This is true, of course, in the sense that social distancing and de-densification (surely a candidate for word of the year) are among the only effective measures to keep a contagion from spreading. We have little choice but to isolate ourselves from one another if we are to stop this disease, despite the rolling economic train wreck it has triggered.
Labour
Ben Wray – The Gig Economy Couriers: Operating Precariously at the Connection Points of the Covid-19 Economy
https://braveneweurope.com/ben-wray-the-gig-economy-couriers-operating-precariously-at-the-connection-points-of-the-covid-19-economy
Until the lockdown shut most of us behind our four walls, a new distinct feature of the European urban environment had become apparent to all. The gig economy couriers. Riders buzzing round street corners with Deliveroo back-packs on and Uber bumper stickers on cars, they have become an emblem of an age of precarious, app-driven work.
Working, working together, and networking during the web-hype of the ‘corona crisis’
https://non.copyriot.com/working-working-together-and-networking-during-the-web-hype-of-the-corona-crisis/
In a critical moment in which entire populations are forced to avoid any potential exposure to contagion by pursuing isolated lives in online-only mode, the conditions of work are more uncertain than ever. Magdalena Taube and Krystian Woznicki take this uncertainty as a starting point to inquire what we can do and how we can work together. And how – along the way – we can debunk AI-driven capitalism’s myths.
U.S. gig and informal workers strike demanding better protection during COVID-19 outbreak
https://mronline.org/2020/04/04/u-s-gig-and-informal-workers-strike-demanding-better-protection-during-covid-19-outbreak/
Delivery and warehousing workers of the Whole Foods Market chain went on strike across the United States on March 31, Tuesday. Calling it a “Sickout”, the workers called in sick in protest against the inadequate protections provided by companies amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Delivery and warehousing workers in the U.S. have been consistently demanding better and stronger policies, including hazard pay.
Covid-19: A Critical Moment for Platforms?
http://www.platform-mobilities.net/en/aktivitaeten
Sometimes humour helps, even in the time of COVID-19: “How do you manage to do contact-free delivery if the soup has spilled into the backpack?” asks one Berlin rider for the food delivery platform Lieferando to his colleagues. “I throw a drinking straw to the customer,” answers another. Behind the jokes, the situation is serious. Although Lieferando has been campaigning for “contactless delivery” since the week before last, these two riders are still exposed to health-related risks. At the same time, they are in an economically precarious situation. Workers for food delivery services and other platforms oscillate between anxiety about getting infected through the significant contact they have with clients and restaurants and fear that their jobs will have to be put on hold and they will be stuck without earnings.
Uber drivers are being forced to choose between risking Covid-19 or starvation
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/25/uber-lyft-gig-economy-coronavirus?CMP=share_btn_fb
By defying the law to refuse their workers’ basic benefits, the giants of the gig economy are creating a heartbreaking crisis
Amazon workers plan strike at Staten Island warehouse to demand coronavirus protections
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/29/amazon-workers-in-staten-island-plan-strike-over-coronavirus-safety.html
Amazon warehouse workers at a fulfillment center in Staten Island, known as JFK8, are planning to walk out on Monday. The workers are demanding that Amazon close the facility for sanitizing after a worker tested positive for the coronavirus last week. While only one case has been reported publicly, JFK8 workers claim managers aren’t being transparent about how many people are sick. “We are following all guidelines from local health officials and are taking extreme measures to ensure the safety of employees at our site,” Amazon said.
“Essential” immigrant farmworkers struggle to feed themselves during Coronavirus
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/essential-immigrant-farmworkers-struggle-to-feed-themselves-during-coronavirus/
Immigrant farm workers have long been essential to the United States. But they have never been recognized, respected or properly rewarded for their labour.
The Wild West
https://www.epi.org/blog/the-wild-west-gig-workers-on-the-front-lines-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-lack-basic-worker-protections/
Gig workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic lack basic worker protections
Gig-Working Through the Apocalypse
https://newrepublic.com/article/157227/gig-working-apocalypse
The app-based economy was already a race to the bottom. The pandemic raises the question of how much lower things can go.
Logistics
Oil and Gas Pipelines Are Still Being Built as the Rest of the Economy Shuts Down
https://truthout.org/articles/pipelines-are-still-being-built-as-the-rest-of-the-economy-shuts-down/
Despite the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, National Grid pushed workers to complete the North Brooklyn “MRI” Pipeline construction in New York until March 27.
Amazon ment et continue de profiter de la crise
https://reporterre.net/Amazon-ment-et-continue-de-profiter-de-la-crise?fbclid=IwAR0sZSwc544DEy_OFX98Q2H3EdUmJRRortKy1yJwKSpcgcdalC7q5TCOwV0
Vivement critiquée pour avoir profité de la crise du Covid-19, Amazon a cherché récemment à modifier son image. Samedi 21 mars, elle a annoncé officiellement vouloir concentrer « les capacités disponibles sur les articles les plus prioritaires et temporairement cesser de prendre des commandes sur certains produits moins prioritaires en France et en Italie ».
Amazon, l’Impero del Tutto
https://www.doppiozero.com/materiali/amazon-limpero-del-tutto
Quando sentiamo raccontare di Amazon e di Jeff Bezos le pennellate retoriche che ne dipingono la storia vanno dal ricordo dell’epica ascesa di Sears, Roebuck & Co., la più grande catena americana di vendite al dettaglio per quasi tutto il XX secolo con il suo “Big Book”, il catalogo di ogni prodotto che si poteva trovare in commercio (e per cui ha scritto uno come Edgar Rice Burroughs, fra i pionieri della letteratura fantascientifica e ideatore di Tarzan); all’avventurosa impresa di William Moorcroft, sovrintendente delle scuderie per la Compagnia delle Indie Orientali agli inizi dell’800 ed esploratore alla ricerca di una via commerciale per la città santa di Buchara, nell’odierno Uzbekistan (dove riposano i suoi resti, in una tomba anonima e oramai scomparsa sulle rive del fiume Oxus).
Social Reproduction
On Social Reproduction and the Covid-19 Pandemic
https://spectrejournal.com/seven-theses-on-social-reproduction-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/
This pandemic, and the ruling class response to it, offers a clear and tragic illustration of the idea at the heart of Social Reproduction Theory: that life-making bows to the requirements of profit-making.
Causalidad de la pandemia, cualidad de la catástrofe
https://www.eldiario.es/interferencias/Causalidad-pandemia-cualidad-catastrofe_6_1010758925.html
El principal peligro que enfrentamos es considerar al nuevo coronavirus como un fenómeno aislado, sin historia, sin contexto social, económico, cultural.
Social Reproduction Theory And Why We Need it to Make Sense of the Corona Virus Crisis.
http://www.tithibhattacharya.net/new-blog/2020/4/2/social-reproduction-theory-and-why-we-need-it-to-make-sense-of-the-corona-virus-crisis?rq=coronavirus
The pandemic is tragically exposing that while what is needed is a concentration on saving and sustaining life, capitalism is concerned only with saving the economy, or profits; to the extent that a Texan politician, fully representing his class, wants Americans to sacrifice their grandparents in order to save the economy.
Deuda, vivienda, trabajo: una agenda feminista para la pospandemia
http://revistaanfibia.com/ensayo/deuda-vivienda-trabajo-una-agenda-feminista-la-pospandemia/
De las imágenes de dolor que circulan hace semanas, no hay trivialización posible. El virus ha acelerado en forma simultánea en todo el planeta la comprensión del neoliberalismo en sus mecanismos mortíferos sobre cuerpos concretos. Podríamos decir que esto no es una novedad. El neoliberalismo ha mostrado que convive perfectamente con máquinas de muerte: las que suceden en las fronteras y en los campos de refugiadxs por nombrar las más brutales. Pero ahora el virus, que no discrimina por clase y no selecciona según el pasaporte, ha montado un ensayo general de la vida neoliberal como un espectáculo que vemos suceder online, con conteo necropolítico en tiempo real. A partir de ésto, hay dos lugares de enunciación que no nos resultan eficaces. Una rápida partida de defunción para el capitalismo (que incluye desde un editorial del Washington Post pasando por teóricos consagrados) o, en contrapunto, una insistencia en que la pandemia confirma el control capitalista totalitario sobre la vida.
Class and Race Inequality, Health, and COVID-19
https://newpol.org/class-and-race-inequality-health-and-covid-19/
The demographic data collected and reported in the media for sickness and mortality rates due to COVID-19 has focused on age and to a certain extent gender. While mass hardship from unemployment has been widely reported, we have heard little about sickness or mortality rates by class or race for the coronavirus. There is nonetheless, clear evidence that class and race, and health and disease in general are closely linked. It is very likely therefore that sickness, recovery, and mortality rates for the Coronavirus pandemic will closely mirror class divides within countries and between rich and poor countries. Individual and household incomes, which reflects the class structure in a general way will be a key factor in how different classes experience the pandemic and its aftermath. Workers and the poor and people of color will likely suffer at greater rates than more privileged class and racial groups.
Capitalism
Coronashock Capitalism: The Unintended Consequences of Radical Biopolitics
http://medanthroquarterly.org/2020/04/06/coronashock-capitalism-the-unintended-consequences-of-radical-biopolitics/
Biopolitics justifies interventions by whether they enhance the health of the population. Foucault never clarified if biopolitics takes health as supreme value, or if enhancing health is just a means to enhancing wealth. We should distinguish two modes of biopolitics, moderate and radical. In moderate biopolitics, health is enhanced in order to enhance wealth. This is what Foucault described. But the response to COVID-19 is far more drastic. When population health becomes the supreme value and economic wealth becomes subservient it, biopolitics turn radical. I agree with Latour that what we are seeing is biopolitics. I disagree with him that this is a “return”: instead, we have never seen biopolitics on such a scale. 2020 is the birth year of radical biopolitics.
La ilusion de vivir como siempre
http://revistaanfibia.com/ensayo/la-ilusion-vivir-siempre/
La pandemia vuelve inverosímil el discurso mágico sobre las bondades del neoliberalismo. Pero lo más difícil hoy no es ver a Manhattan vacía de personas ni asimilar que se armó un hospital en el Central Park. Lo que sorprende es la ausencia de preguntas sobre cómo sacudir la precariedad de este modelo tan impregnado en las trayectorias de todes. La ideología cala tan hondo que el establishment vende que la vida seguirá igual, y hasta las comunidades más afectadas asumen que no hay otra vía posible y que esta crisis será una deuda más a pagar en cuotas.
Économie ou société. Généalogie xénophobe d’une alternative néolibérale
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/eric-fassin/blog/060420/economie-ou-societe-genealogie-xenophobe-d-une-alternative-neoliberale
La Bourse ou la vie ? Aujourd’hui, il ne suffit pas de renverser les discours néolibéraux, qu’ils privilégient les exigences de l’économie au détriment de la santé, ou qu’ils revendiquent un juste milieu entre les deux. Il faut aussi interroger ce partage. Comment en est-on venu à accepter comme une évidence l’idée que le social est extérieur à l’économie, comme le cœur est étranger à la raison?
Il filosofo Žižek: il Covid19 smaschera il mercato senza regole e i populismi
https://www.globalist.it/letture/2020/04/07/il-filosofo-zizek-il-covid19-smaschera-il-mercato-senza-regole-e-i-populismi-2055766.html
Nell’instant book “Virus” lo studioso sloveno guarda al post-epidemia: «Prima l’America (o chiunque altro)!» non ha senso, questa globalizzazione sta morendo
It’s the capitalism, stupid!
https://www.deriveapprodi.com/2020/04/13888/
Il capitalismo non è mai uscito dalla crisi del 2007/2008. Il virus si innesta sull’illusione di capitalisti, banchieri, politici di poter far tornare tutto come prima, dichiarando uno sciopero generale, sociale e planetario che i movimenti di contestazione sono stati incapaci di produrre.
Il blocco totale del suo funzionamento mostra che in mancanza di movimenti rivoluzionari, il capitalismo può implodere e la sua putrefazione cominciare a infettare tutti (ma secondo rigorose differenze di classe). Il che non significa la fine del capitalismo, ma solo la sua lunga e estenuante agonia che potrà essere dolorosa e feroce. In ogni modo era chiaro che questo capitalismo trionfante non poteva continuare, ma già Marx, nel Manifesto, ci aveva avvisati.
How “Just-in-Time” Capitalism Spread COVID-19
https://spectrejournal.com/how-just-in-time-capitalism-spread-covid-19/
Capitalism has accelerated the transmission of diseases. Historically, most epidemics have spread geographically through two common forms of human long-distance movement: trade and war. The timing, however, changed dramatically with the rise of capitalism.
Art
How zombie films reveal the true dangers of covid-19
https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/04/05/zombies-prepare-covid-19-pandemic/ideas/essay/
Like the Living Dead, a Virus Can Overwhelm Powerful States, Ruin Economies—and Reveal Our Best and Worst Selves
Making New Futures: Art and Community during a Pandemic
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4647-making-new-futures-art-and-community-during-a-pandemic
Lauren Velvick on the ways community arts organisations and festivals in Blackburn and Lincoln have responded to the economic and social effects of Covid-19.
Sinosfere – (Auto)narrazioni in Cina ai tempi del coronavirus
https://www.china-files.com/sinosfere-autonarrazioni-in-cina-ai-tempi-del-coronavirus/
Nel presente contributo verranno prendese in esame alcune narrazioni “dal basso” della società cinese, emerse nei giorni scorsi attraverso diversi canali. Registrare e dar conto di tali voci non ha tanto l’ambizione, o la velleità, di trovarvi un ribaltamento del discorso ufficiale; è però sotto il clangore dei grandi proclami e la freddezza dei dati statistici che scorrono le vite, non di rado invisibili se non persino dimenticate, la cui vita quotidiana, nella sua manzoniana “meccanicità”, è stata completamente sovvertita e che stanno subendo il prezzo sociale dell’attuale crisi. In questo quadro è utile e interessante analizzare il legame contraddittorio e la negoziazione che si instaura fra queste (auto)narrazioni e la grande narrazione di Stato.
History
How pandemics shape society
https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/04/09/alexandre-white-how-pandemics-shape-society/
Johns Hopkins sociologist and historian Alexandre White discusses how past pandemics, such as the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak, have reverberated long after the disease stops spreading
