Care, Control and COVID-19: Health and Biopolitics in Philosophy and Literature

Published by De Gruyter 2023

Care, Control and COVID-19

Health and Biopolitics in Philosophy and Literature

Edited by: Raili Marling and Marko Pajević

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110799361

Overview
Contents

About this book

This volume sheds light on the social and cultural transformations that accompanied the Covid-19 crisis by looking at health and biopolitics from a philosophical and literary perspective.

The biopolitical measures taken globally in response to the crisis have led to previously unheard-of restrictions in liberal societies, resulting in deep and potentially lasting transformations both in social structures and interpersonal relationships. Many researchers have addressed the Covid-19 crisis as a political or epidemiological challenge, but few have paid sufficient attention to the culturally specific reactions and cultural representations of the human beings at the centre of events. Literary analyses capture this human component and give insights into different reactions to, and protests against, the health-political measures addressing the crisis.

This book puts the notion of biopolitics, first extensively theorised in the 1970s, to work in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, and uses literary case studies as starting points for discussions of contemporary politics, media, and legal and surveillance regimes. It brings together eleven scholars from six countries with the shared aim of combining literary and philosophical expertise to create a better understanding of the changes in society and political attitudes induced by the ongoing pandemic.

Author / Editor information

Raili Marling, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia; Marko Pajević, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.

Reviews

"Entirely compelling, current and insightful. Even though the Covid pandemic necessarily stands at the center of the volume’s concern, the contributors bring a wide range of geographic, historical and methodological perspectives to bear on it, from an analysis of the figuration of disease in ancient to modern plague narratives to an examination of the effects of Covid measures on contemporary Chinese internet poetry. I have no doubt that this volume will spark intense debate within and across numerous disciplinary boundaries." – Kevin Attell, Cornell University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Introduction: Health and Biopolitics in COVID-19 Times – What Constitutes a Healthy Society? Marko Pajević and Raili Marling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Preliminary Remarks for a Biopolitical History of Western Plague Narratives Daniele Monticelli Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
How to Manage Plague and COVID-19: Parallels and Differences Between Today and Premodern and Early-Modern Medical Theories Meelis Friedenthal Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
“Civilization is Sterilization”: Utopia, Biopolitics and the Total Society in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World Thomas Crew Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
COVID-19 as Event: Mythology and Ritual in Agamben’s Pandemic Dispatches Timothy Campbell Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
Biopolitics, Form-of-Life, A New Use of Bodies Sherryl Vint Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
The Relationality and Representability of Biopolitical Crises Raili Marling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
State Control Versus Humanity: Biopolitics and Health in Juli Zeh’s The METHOD (Corpus Delicti, 2009) Marko Pajević Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
The Quantified Self: Surveillance, Biopolitics and Literary Resistance Betiel Wasihun Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
When “Total War” Joins “People’s War”: China’s Recent Surge of Biopolitics and Its Repercussions in Internet Poetry Frank Kraushaar Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Inside in Immunity, Outside in Community? Discussing Esposito and Framing Pandemic Polemics in France Marge Käsper Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Needful Facts, Big and Small: On Bodies, Equality, and Treatment Michael Eskin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
About the Authors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Literary and philosophy scholars and students, but also other scholars from the humanities and social sciences.
Pages
- Front matter: 8
- Main content: 278
Keywords: Biopolitics; Covid-19; literature; philosophy

eBook

Published: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9783110799361

Hardcover

Published: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9783110799279