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Revitalising biopower in the context of COVID-19 : biopolitics against a state of exception
Dissertation (MSocSci (Sociology)) University of Pretoria, 2022.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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University of Pretoria
2023
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| _version_ | 1867613531283652608 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author2 | Reddy, Vasu |
| author_browse | Reddy, Vasu |
| author_facet | Reddy, Vasu |
| collection | Thesis |
| dc_rights_str_mv | © 2022 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. |
| description | Dissertation (MSocSci (Sociology)) University of Pretoria, 2022. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/89374 |
| institution | University of Pretoria (South Africa) |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:37:37.672Z |
| license_str | Other — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| publishDateRange | 2023 |
| publishDateSort | 2023 |
| publisher | University of Pretoria |
| publisherStr | University of Pretoria |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UPSpace — University of Pretoria Institutional Repository |
| spelling | oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/89374 Revitalising biopower in the context of COVID-19 : biopolitics against a state of exception Reddy, Vasu dtrevorvanwyk@gmail.com Van Wyk, Duncan Trevor UCTD Biopolitics State of exception Genealogy South Africa Dissertation (MSocSci (Sociology)) University of Pretoria, 2022. When the World Health Organisation (WHO) first declared the Covid-19 crisis a global pandemic, an unprecedented experiment in both the management of population groups and crisis situations followed. Within their attempts at mass biosocial coordination geared towards mitigating the pandemic’s consequences, nation states around the world developed policy responses that, in many instances, reflected a shift in their particular citizen-state relationships. As nation states were forced to choose between preserving public health on the one hand and protecting their economies and democratic principles on the other hand, the question remains how to interpret these interventions and shifts in citizen-state relationships. This dissertation responds to a current in social intellectual thought that emerged at the beginning of the pandemic, and which drew on an Agambean biopolitics to frame the pandemic as a politically manufactured crisis to legitimate the institutionalisation of a ‘state of exception’ allowing for an unjust extension of state powers. Rather, this dissertation is formulated against the grain of a ‘state of exception’. It argues that any biopolitics which unequivocally assumes the function and form of state interventions prior to an analysis of its local instantiations cannot be fruitful. Contextual factors such as a country’s position in the world economy, available resources and infrastructure, internal politics, and international relations differentially shaped the biopolitical outcomes experienced by respective nation states. A conceptualisation of biopolitics sensitive to difference is needed to better theorise ‘biopolitical inclusion’ – how citizens are included in the ‘make live’ policies of the state – as well as any subsequent changes to the citizen-state relationship. Furthermore, this dissertation is written in full acknowledgement of the fact that the prevailing conceptualisations of biopolitics put forward by prominent scholars such as Michel Foucault have been largely excised from their conditions of emergence in their exclusion of the roles of colonialism and imperialism in the formation of the modern biopolitical nation state. As such, the dissertation deploys a poststructuralist method and conducts a genealogy applied to a South African biopolitics in order to ascertain conceptualisations of biopolitics better suited to local contexts and which can better understand shifts in the citizen-state relationships in particular. Keywords: Biopolitics; state of exception; South Africa; genealogy Sociology MSocSci (Sociology) Unrestricted 2023-02-09T12:18:08Z 2023-02-09T12:18:08Z 2023-04-20 2022 Dissertation * A2023 https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/89374 en © 2022 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. application/pdf University of Pretoria |
| spellingShingle | UCTD Biopolitics State of exception Genealogy South Africa Revitalising biopower in the context of COVID-19 : biopolitics against a state of exception |
| title | Revitalising biopower in the context of COVID-19 : biopolitics against a state of exception |
| title_full | Revitalising biopower in the context of COVID-19 : biopolitics against a state of exception |
| title_fullStr | Revitalising biopower in the context of COVID-19 : biopolitics against a state of exception |
| title_full_unstemmed | Revitalising biopower in the context of COVID-19 : biopolitics against a state of exception |
| title_short | Revitalising biopower in the context of COVID-19 : biopolitics against a state of exception |
| title_sort | revitalising biopower in the context of covid 19 biopolitics against a state of exception |
| topic | UCTD Biopolitics State of exception Genealogy South Africa |
| url | https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/89374 |