Pandemic, Event, and the Immanence of Life : Critical Reflections on Covid-19

This volume reflects on different regional and national experiences of the Covid 19 pandemic, with contributions from India, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, Italy, United States, and Canada. This book draws upon a number of approaches but especially the works of Deleuze and Guattari, Agamben, Derrida, Foucault, Habermas, Latour, and Serres. It looks at the methodological aspects of treating the pandemic, focuses on laying out the posthuman condition of the event largely problematizing the immanence of life which affirms the transversal Deleuzian ethic of life, and extends the politics of life to the domain of immunology. Together, the authors make it apparent that the pandemic is a multifaceted event, or many different kinds of events – virological, informational, phenomenological, social, and discursive. The authors skilfully develop these different dimensions of the pandemic event and show the relations between them. These essays will enrich the reader’s understanding of the pandemic and its effects, while demonstrating the depth and breadth of the resources that humanities scholarship can mobilize to help us understand such phenomena. This volume will be useful to students of posthumanism, medical humanities, health communication, political communication, semiotics, literature, cultural theories, and major strains of thought from contemporary continental philosophy. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of Contributors Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction Notes Part I: Analysing the Pandemic: Ontology and Method Chapter 2: Pandemic and the Question of Life: Towards a Posthuman Ontology Introduction I Pandemic and the politics of life Extreme Life: Life at the Edges II Anthropocene: Against the New Humanism III Life and Multiplicity Conclusion References Chapter 3: Metamodelling the Pandemic: A Guattarian Approach What Is Metamodelling? The Covidisation of Subjectivation Ecosophy in the Covid-19 Era Conclusion: Unglued Alterities and Deterritorialised Assemblages References Chapter 4: The Covid-19 Pandemic and Medico-Cyber-Political Discourse Notes References Chapter 5: The Time of Uncanny, the Time of Event The Return of the Repressed Automata and Wild Animals The Perturbing on the Surface The Truth of the Virus Notes Bibliography Part II: Politics of the Pandemic Chapter 6: COVID-19 and the Production of Knowledge: Communication, Control, and the Citizenry Introduction Part I The Pandemic News: Epidemiological Data and Its Epistemological Considerations Reporting Science and Medicine: The Subjectivisation of Objective Knowledge Between Presentation and Representation: Veracity and Sourcing in the News Text Part II Surveillance, Social Control, and the State’s Politico-Medical Imperatives Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 7: Philosophy and Pandemics: Agamben, Deleuze, and Zoepolitics in an Age of Covid-19 Introduction Agamben and Covid-19 Agamben and Biopolitics Deleuze and Guattari and the Politics of Desire The Schizoanalysis and Deterrritorialization of Biopolitics Bibliography Chapter 8: Of Virus and Man: From Wound to Belief in the World The Birth of the Paranoiac The Event as Wound Sense Is Nonsense The Object’s Wound The Viral Ontology Notes Bibliography Part III: Thought in Response to the Pandemic: New Concepts Chapter 9: Living in a World without Others1 The Three Robinsons The Schizoid and Depressive Poles Notes References Chapter 10: The Dithering Pandemic Introduction: A Pandemic, ‘the Dithering’, and the Anthropocene A Philosophy of the Dithering Language and Affect Machines Libidinal Materialism Simulacrum White Noise for Postmedia Conclusion(s) Thinking through the Dithering References Chapter 11: Quarantine or Feast?: Hospitality and the State of Plague Introduction State of Uncertainty ‘Might as Well Open Our Doors’ Calculating the Leviathan Invisible Worlds Feasts of the False Gods From Hotel to Hospital Notes References Index