Human Rights-inspired Governmentality: COVID-19 through a Human Dignity Perspective

Enzo Colombo

doi:10.1177/0896920520971846

Abstract

The paper aims to reconstruct the debate over the pandemic in Italy to highlight the logic of the discourse that guided the various voices. The two governmentalities that have monopolized the public and political debate are biomedical and economic. The former brought the defense of biological life ( zoé) as the ultimate element of truth and legitimacy of the government’s action. The latter, based the “true” justification upon a careful cost–benefit calculation and the protection of the interests of homo oeconomicus. The debate lacked a “social” perspective capable of placing dignity and human rights as a compass for intervention. What has been lost by limiting the question to a choice between defending bare life or defending economic interests? Behind an apparent impartial universalism that would drive both biomedical and economic logic, there emerges a form of discrimination and lack of protection for specific sectors of society, in particular the marginal ones.

Highlights

In a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed most of our certainties, habits, and future plans
In the dispute between a governmentality inspired by biomedicine and oriented to the defense of bare life and a governmentality inspired by economic thought and oriented to the defense of wealth and prosperity, a perspective inspired by the defense of dignity and human rights has found only a marginal and residual space
Using human dignity as a compass for governance means recognizing that rights and freedoms do not primarily concern the protection, at all costs, of the biological life of individuals, or the security of their economic freedom against all that hinders it

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed most of our certainties, habits, and future plans. The upheaval caused by the pandemic has been severe in Italy, a nation already marked by extreme economic difficulties, political uncertainty, growing social disparity, unemployment—especially youth unemployment–and wide regional differences. The aim of the paper is to describe the main stages of the development of public debate and political control over the pandemic in Italy–from within Lombardy, the most tragically affected area—and to highlight the logic of the discourses that determined the legitimacy of the various voices in the field. Starting from the clash between the various governmentalities invoked and implemented to address the pandemic, it reflects on the weakness—if not the total aphasia—of a social logic able to impose its specific perspective on the health crisis and on the possible ways to deal with it

The Appearance of the Pandemic in Italy

Save the Bare Life

Save homo oeconomicus

Findings

Conclusions