Our highlights from the hundreds of excellent pieces our system uncovered during the week.
The State of Biopower in the Age of the CoronavirusJoanna Wuest | The Philosophical Salon
"Now is the time for rigorous analysis and strategizing about how to retool the state, to de-commodify health industries, and to introduce some element of rational planning to address situations where the irrationality of market forces has left populations susceptible to crisis."
A Post-COVID-19 Digital Bretton Woods
Rohinton P. Medhora, Taylor Owen | Project Syndicate
"When world leaders came together in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, they laid the foundation for a model of global governance that would last for more than 70 years. To manage the far-reaching implications of digital technology and hyper-globalization, we must now pick up where they left off."
The Inexorable Rise of the Pandemic State? Second-Guessing the long-term political repercussions of COVID 19
Brendan Flynn | Moore Institute
"Western states will for the duration of the pandemic become inevitably more authoritarian, getting used to restricting freedom of movement and association, and this may create surprisingly long-lasting legacies."
Nicht jede Krise ist eine Chance [German]
Klaus Dörre | Jacobin
"Steckt in der Corona-Krise eine Chance? Manche Debatten in den Sozialwissenschaften, aber auch in gesellschaftlichen Öffentlichkeiten legen das nahe. Ich halte von solchen Einschätzungen nichts. Werden sie aus der Bauchnabelperspektive privilegierter Professoren mit hohen Einkommen und schönen Wohnungen geführt, wirken sie bestenfalls peinlich."
A crisis like no other: social reproduction and the regeneration of capitalist life during the COVID-19 pandemic
Alessandra Mezzadri | Developing Economics
"One may hope [for fundamental change]. However, current debates on potential ways out of the lockdown – based on ‘herd immunity’ and the issuing of immunity passports – seem to chillingly suggest a future yet again based on ever more aggressive frontiers of commodification of reproductive traits of individuals and societies, possibly triggering new socio-economic inequalities based on ‘immunocapital’."
La peste e lo stato [Italian]
Alberto Toscano | Il Rasoio di Occam
"La crisi pandemica ha generato un diffuso desiderio di stato e di autorità. Ma per filtrare questo desiderio imponendo un nuovo bisogno collettivo di salute occorre rivolgersi alle tradizioni di ciò che potremmo chiamare “dualismo del biopotere”, vale a dire ai tentativi di appropriarsi politicamente di quegli aspetti della riproduzione sociale, dalle abitazioni alla medicina, che lo stato e il capitale hanno abbandonato o reso insopportabilmente “esclusivi”."
Coronavirus: une écaille de pangolin dans le soulier de satin chinois [French]
Valérie Toranian | Revue des Deux Mondes
"La Chine a minimisé l’épidémie, tardé à alerter l’opinion, menti sur les chiffres, masqué le nombre de morts qui serait largement sous-estimé. Elle a bénéficié du soutien sans faille de l’OMS, une des multiples structures onusiennes dans lesquelles elle est entrée comme dans du beurre depuis que les États-Unis de Trump s’en désinvestissent."
Ill Will. Throughout history, pandemics have been structured by racism
Edna Bonhomme | The Baffler
"The people whose health is deemed less important are often the same people who will be most devastated by the economic effects of a pandemic."
A distopia liberal, as economias de guerra e o pós-crise já em disputa [Portuguese]
Mauricio Metri | Le Monde diplomatique Brasil
"Diante dos diferentes desafios (sanitário e econômico), parece haver um consenso entre muitos analistas: não há solução para a crise pela via do mercado. Da utopia à distopia liberal, ao que tudo indica caberá a Covid-19 jogar a pá de cal no neoliberalismo e na globalização econômica iniciada há quatro décadas."
La epidemia es el capitalismo [Spanish]
Iban Zaldua | CTXT
"Leer novelas sobre epidemias durante la epidemia, sí, de acuerdo, pero, ¿y si algunos de estos libros tratasen de algo más que de virus y salud? A propósito de ‘Diario del año de la peste’, de Daniel Defoe."
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