#covid19 #coronavirus #global #pandemic #medicine #science #politics #philosophy

One of the more interesting comments I read yesterday.

Pinkie123 (Comment in The Guardian 4th April 2020) re Covid-19

"The politics of Covid-19 are fascinatingly all over the shop. Victor Orban, Geert Wilders and Thierry Baudet have called for a total lockdown along with much of the established left. Conversely, a Foucauldian Marxist skeptical of state biopower may find himself allied with a gun-toting militiaman in Iowa. People are trying to frame the debate in right/left categories when it cuts across those on multiple levels.

"All I do know is that I'm uncomfortable with this "You're not a scientist! Shut up and do as your told" shoutdown of any criticism of government policy. Not only because the science is far from agreed amongst scientists themselves, but because the presupposition that science is not as susceptible to distortion and corruption as any other form of knowledge is rather dangerous. Plainly this is not true. Or rather, the problem is not science as such but the way science is politically and institutionally effectuated. This is Foucault's position I think. Knowledge is power. He's not saying there isn't verifiable knowledge, just that it can never be separated from power.

"I'm looking at this from a biopolitical perspective, asking how the powerful may reorganise the state around the concept of the citizen as walking biohazard - and how that could outlive the pandemic. A world in which I go to the cinema or sit in a cafe, cough, and them have people move away in fear, is rather nightmarish."