Article ID: CBB511290956

Coronavirus biopolitics: The paradox of France’s Foucauldian heritage (2021)

unapi

In this short paper we analyse some paradoxical aspects of France’s Foucauldian heritage: (1) while several French scholars claim the COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of what Foucault called biopolitics, popular reaction instead suggests a biopolitical failure on the part of the government; (2) One of these failures concerns the government’s inability to produce reliable biostatistical data, especially regarding health inequalities in relation to COVID-19. We interrogate whether Foucaldianism contributed, in the past as well today, towards a certain myopia in France regarding biostatistics and its relation to social inequalities in health. One might ask whether this very data could provide an appropriate response to the Foucauldian question: What kind of governance of life is the pandemic revealing to us?

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Authors & Contributors
Bretelle-Establet, Florence
Caianiello, Silvia
Engelmann, Lukas
Espinosa, Mariola
Meloni, Maurizio
Murphy, Michelle
Journals
Laboratorio dell'ISPF
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Comparative Studies in Society and History
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Publishers
University of Toronto
Quodlibet
Concepts
Public health
Biopolitics
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Epidemics
Medicine and society
Pandemics
People
Foucault, Michel
Fassin, Didier
Frost, Wade Hampton
Rosenberg, Charles E.
Andrea Verga
Reed, Lowell
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
Medieval
Places
China
Africa
Caribbean
Chile
Mexico
Europe
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