Call for Papers Conference: Contagion, Information, Territory Date: 17-19 June, 2026 Location: Leiden University, The Netherlands Keynote speakers Dr. Ramon Amaro (Design Academy Eindhoven) Prof. Dr. Jasbir Puar (University of British Columbia) Deadline Call for Papers: 31 January, 2026 PDF of call for papers As new forms of exclusion and colonialism are emerging and old …
Lars Erik L. Gjerde, Nordic Leviathans. A Weberian-Foucauldian Study of the Politics of COVID-19 in Norway and Sweden, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025 About this book This book offers a theoretical synthesis between the Foucauldian theory of power and the Weberian theory of the state. The book centres on the politics of COVID-19 in Norway and Sweden. …
Sorace, C. (2025). Life First: Pandemic Biopolitics in China. Political Theory, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917251323747 Abstract China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic could be described as a lesson directly from the pages of Foucault. For nearly three years, China’s vast state apparatus and society were mobilized around the goal of protecting life until November 2023, when people …
Friedmann, V., & Marton, P. (2025). Operating by caesura: Medicalisation, geopolitical othering and biopolitical legitimacy in the (non-)approval of Sputnik V in the European Union Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2024.2442433 Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic made biopolitical decisions, including on vaccine approval, a subject of public discussion, challenging governmental legitimacy at the level of …
Pavlich, G. Plaguing Segregations: Paradigms of Rule at The Cape of Good Hope (2024) Canadian Journal of Law and Society DOI: 10.1017/cls.2023.25 Abstract Power, while fundamental to sociality, might be exercised with haphazard ferocity or more judiciously in legally constrained ways. Such constraint requires us first to understand how ruling paradigms work, and the effects …
Chu, Y. Cartooning COVID-19 in China (2023) Critical Arts, 37 (4), pp. 39-56. DOI: 10.1080/02560046.2023.2290689 Abstract The paper offers a discourse analysis of the visuality of COVID-19 cartoons published in three media outlets in China: Satire and Humour, circulated in the domestic market, China Daily, targeting an international anglophone readership, and an alternative, critical voice …
Li, J. Interdiscursivity through Foucault’s dreams of the plague: discursive constructions of the covid-19 pandemic in The New York Times (2024) Journal of Multicultural Discourses Abstract Adopting an interdiscursive approach to text and discourse, this study investigates the complex and interwoven discursive relations between various social and discursive practices in The New York Times’s representation …
Joseph, J. Authoritarianism, Governmentality and the COVID-19 Response (2024) Global Society DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2024.2383241 Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic raises important questions about biopolitics and governmentality, not least, what are the limitations of governing through not governing too much? Important questions concern the role of the state, citizenship, privacy, and concerns about populist movements and personal freedom. …
Civitarese, G., Distel, E. “Thus far and no further”: Inquiry into a dreamless society (2024) International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies DOI: 10.1002/aps.1889 Abstract Humans are highly social primates who naturally seek out groups in which to live. Our individual psychology is inherently intertwined with that of the group, forming an inextricable link between the …
Krupar, S., Ehlers, N. The Racial Spectacular: Pandemic Governance Through Dashboards and State Biosecurity (2024) Science Technology and Human Values DOI: 10.1177/01622439241265641 Abstract Data visualizations related to COVID-19 operate as forms of spectacle essential to the racialized governance of the pandemic. Guy Debord theorized spectacle as separation—between subjects, populations, regions, dots on a map. We …
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