Lars Erik Løvaas Gjerde (2021) Governing humans and ‘things’: power and rule in Norway during the Covid-19 pandemic, Journal of Political Power,
DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2020.1870264
ABSTRACT
This text focuses on the mentalities and technologies of power employed by the Norwegian government as it attempts to control the Covid-19 pandemic. Utilizing governmentality studies and a Foucauldian discourse analysis, I find life itself to be given primacy within a biopolitical problem space where the government seeks to contain the spread of Covid-19. The government primarily rationalizes its exercises of power in a liberal manner while employing a complex set of liberal and coercive technologies, which it channels towards both the human population, which serves as an object of administration, and Covid-19, which serves as an object of domination.
KEYWORDS:
Covid-19 governmentality Foucault biopolitics actor-network
