Biopolitics of COVID-19: Capitalist Continuities and Democratic Openings

Karsten Schubert

doi:10.51897/interalia/oagm9733

Abstract

"Biopolitics" has become a popular concept for interpreting the COVID-19 pandemic, yet the term is often used vaguely, as a buzzword, and therefore loses its specificity and relevance. This article systematically explains what the biopolitical lens offers for analyzing and normatively criticizing the politics of the coronavirus. I argue that biopolitics are politics of differentiated vulnerability that are intrinsic to capitalist modernity. The situation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic is, therefore, less of a state of exception than it might appear; COVID-19 is a continuation and intensification of the capitalist biopolitics of differentiated vulnerability. In order to critically evaluate this situation, the article proposes the concept of "democratic biopolitics" and shows how it can be used, among others, for a queer critique of the differentiated vulnerabilities that are produced by the coronavirus and its capitalist governance. In contrast to widespread interpretations of democratic biopolitics that focus on collective care in communities, this article highlights the role of the state and of the redistribution of political power and economic resources as key for biopolitical democratization.

Highlights

We live in very Foucauldian times, as the many articles and essays published on biopolitics and COVID-19 suggest
The term biopolitics is often used vaguely or as a buzzword, losing its specificity and relevance. In this piece, I first systematically explain what the biopolitical lens offers for analyzing the politics of COVID-19, and show how the biopolitical vocabulary could be further developed towards normative concepts that would effectively evaluate the biopolitics of the coronavirus
In order to critically evaluate this situation, I propose the concept of “democratic biopolitics” and show how it can be used for a queer critique of the differentiated vulnerabilities that are produced by the coronavirus and its capitalist governance

Summary

Biopolitics and Capitalist Modernity

The contemporary conception of “biopolitics” was coined by Michel Foucault. Foucault was concerned with power, that is, with how people are governed, which techniques are used for government, and how these relate to knowledge and science. Biopolitics can explain how the “original exploitation” (Marx, 1991: 641–85; Harvey, 2004) of capitalism is not original at all, but an ongoing mode of letting some die while making others live and protecting them Allowing such violent exploitation by letting some people die, through forcing them to work to death for others, points to the inherent connection between capitalism and racism, as the genesis of capitalism is based on postcolonial exploitation and slavery (Robinson, 2000). Biopolitics has always been about protecting some and exposing others to vulnerability that can, in the most extreme cases, result in death Examples for this differentiated vulnerability in the current COVID-19 situation are plentiful: think of different working conditions between the home office class and lowincome workers in the meat and plant picking industries that saw massive coronavirus outbreaks in Germany, for example, or the situation of refugees in camps. In Germany, contact restrictions were eased during Christmas in a way that privileged heteronormative families and excluded queer sociality (Schubert, 2020)

Is COVID-19 a State of Exception?

Democratic and Populist Biopolitics2