Post-pandemic South Asian Governmentalities and Foucault: State Power and Ordinary Citizens

Abstract

As the post-COVID world order necessitates a radical overhaul of the ways in which we understand the very notions of “health”, “care” and “security”, one must revisit Michel Foucault and his works in these shifting times to rethink biopolitics as a category viz-a-viz contemporary globalectics. Keeping that in mind, while reviewing two very interesting books by and on Foucault – South Asian Governmentalities: Michel Foucault and the Question of Postcolonial Orderings and Archives of Infamy: Foucault on State Power in the Lives of Ordinary Citizens – the article attempts to highlight certain core Foucauldian concerns in different domains of human existence that the...