Care, Control and COVID-19 : Health and Biopolitics in Philosophy and Literature

This volume sheds light on the social and cultural transformations that accompanied the Covid-19 crisis by looking at health and biopolitics from a philosophical and literary perspective.

The biopolitical measures taken globally in response to the crisis have led to previously unheard-of restrictions in liberal societies, resulting in deep and potentially lasting transformations both in social structures and interpersonal relationships. Many researchers have addressed the Covid-19 crisis as a political or epidemiological challenge, but few have paid sufficient attention to the culturally specific reactions and cultural representations of the human beings at the centre of events. Literary analyses capture this human component and give insights into different reactions to, and protests against, the health-political measures addressing the crisis.

This book puts the notion of biopolitics, first extensively theorised in the 1970s, to work in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, and uses literary case studies as starting points for discussions of contemporary politics, media, and legal and surveillance regimes. It brings together eleven scholars from six countries with the shared aim of combining literary and philosophical expertise to create a better understanding of the changes in society and political attitudes induced by the ongoing pandemic.

"Entirely compelling, current and insightful. Even though the Covid pandemic necessarily stands at the center of the volume’s concern, the contributors bring a wide range of geographic, historical and methodological perspectives to bear on it, from an analysis of the figuration of disease in ancient to modern plague narratives to an examination of the effects of Covid measures on contemporary Chinese internet poetry. I have no doubt that this volume will spark intense debate within and across numerous disciplinary boundaries." – Kevin Attell, Cornell University