Biopolítica e pandemia: que futuro queremos?

• Autor(a) principal: Amaral, Margarida
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34632/gaudiumsciendi.2021.11200

This article assumes that the pandemic context has negative consequences in ethical and political terms. Social isolation keeps us more and more away from our peers and the risk of our survival legitimizes a politics centered on exclusively vital concerns. In political terms, this situation can be understood as the culmination of a biopolitics that, according to Foucault, has been installed since the 18th century and, according to Agamben, is fully realized in the contemporary world. His texts on the pandemic are marked by three fundamental characteristics: denialism, criticism of government action and a concern for the future. This article highlights this last characteristic, understanding the enormous risks we face when it is only survival that is at stake. However, it is equally important to understand that the radicalization of biopolitics that we see in the current world, which is a novelty, brings with it the opportunity to think that all crises provide. It is time to ask ourselves about the postpandemic world that we want. It will certainly be a world that is ethically more supportive and in which political participation allows to discuss and exercise freedom and rights in a qualified life that transcends mere survival.