The biopolitical economy of the COVID-19 pandemic and the possibilities for an affirmative biopolitics

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is in threefold. First, it focuses on the workings and operations of the biopolitical economy. Second, it explores how the pandemic has exposed the thanatopolitical tendency of neoliberal capitalism, particularly in the form of herd immunity. Herd immunity deploys death as one of the instruments, making plain that the valuation of life is based on its sacrificability to capital. The final part engages with Roberto Esposito’s affirmative biopolitical perspective that strives to avoid the thanatopolitical tendency Agamben (over-)emphasized. I claim that while Esposito’s affirmative biopolitical perspective puts pressure on the thanatopolitical position, it could nevertheless be invoked for the reconstitution or reconceptualization of the future commons.

KEYWORDS:

• The Covid-19 pandemic
• the biopolitical economy
• capitalism
• thanatopolitics
• herd immunity
• affirmative biopolitics
• the commons

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Acknowledgments

I thank Hannah Richter, Erdoğan H. Sima and two anonymous reviewers for their extremely insightful comments on this article.

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Ali Rıza Taşkale

Ali Rıza Taşkale teaches social and cultural theory at Near East University, Nicosia. His research has been published in Thesis Eleven, Rethinking Marxism, Northern Lights, Critique, New Political Science, Contemporary Political Theory, Theory, Culture & Society, Journal for Cultural Research, and Third Text, along with a number of book chapters in edited volumes. His most recent book, Post-Politics in Context, is published by Routledge (2016). He’s currently working on a project that explores the logical and structural relationship between speculative fiction and speculative finance.