Open AccessA conversation about the state in pandemic times
Author(s) -
Linda Berg,
Erika Alm
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
kulturella perspektiv
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2004-0288
pISSN - 1102-7908
DOI - 10.54807/kp.v30.1507
Subject(s) - conversation , state (computer science) , state of exception , rhetoric , politics , biopower , political science , safeguarding , corporate governance , pandemic , political economy , sociology , law , public administration , law and economics , covid-19 , economics , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , nursing , communication , finance , algorithm , computer science , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
Established ideas about state responsibility and state violence are placed in a new light in times characterized as states of emergency. The following conversation addresses the role of the state in the safeguarding of public health, taking its departure in media debates and political debates about state responsibility in two countries that have been criticized for not taking strong enough measures to protect the very futuriority of the nation in times of a pandemic Sweden and Nicaragua. Both countries have been castigated for avoiding total lockdown and for having taken a passive approach to what Wendy Brown has called “the political management of the virus” (Brown 2020). At the same time, the rhetoric used to describe their respective strategies has differed vastly in dialogue we explore notions about governance, biopolitics and necropolitics as they are articulated and negotiated in national contexts that claim the label social democracies. One of the points of departure is that while the response to Covid-19 is often described in war metaphors, and hence as a state of emergency, the unjust and unequal distribution of life and death is by no means exceptional.