DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 1 Pandemic: Feminist Perspectives &TheCOVID-19 SONIA CORRÊA DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 2 and, inparticular itsgender andsexuality effects? Though thequestion Biopolitics in a nutshell pandemic in the politics ofgender andsexuality. in COVID-19 biopolitics and vice versa, as well as the effects of the series ofquestions to further explore the placeofgender andsexuality offers insightson thepandemicasbiopolitics and the third raises a biopolitical lens to critically read the COVID-19 crisis? The second in three sections. The first explores thequestion: Why do we need a Biopolitics &Feminist Perspectives. This frameis the point ofdeparture for the this new global crisis, we wanted to underline itsbiopolitical meaning. terms. As many others who are chartering the multidimensionality of of the COVID-19 pandemicineconomic,political andbiopolitical Pandemic its regular monthly announcement titled think andact:capitalism(as the economicformation), the sovereign assemblage that determines the conditions under which we exist, centrality ofgender, reproduction, sexuality and racein the complex biopolitics conceptualframeisindispensable to better grasp the explore the reasons that may explain this imbalance. frame remains uneven. Infact, we may eventually use this dialogue to state power. However, the inclusionofbiopolitics in this analytical critically examines the imbricationbetween capitalist economicsand and, later on,gender from a political economy perspective, which feminisms have extensively theorized about women’s subordination may seem trivial, I think suchanexercise isproductive because Why a biopolitical lens isindispensable to examine the pandemic Last April, Sexuality Policy Watch delivered a specialeditionof From my own intellectual stand-point, the and . It provides a bird’s eye view on the dynamicsandeffects This introductory noteisorganized Sexual Politics in Times of #DAWN Talks onCOVID-19, DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 3 administration, regulation andiscipling of life–in bothsocialand nation state(as the only existing polity model)anda vast web of scientific discourses and practices(particularly biomedicine) occupy a through which power flows inmultiple directions. In thismaze, towards less visible manifestations: webs ofdevices or techniques die. making life (sustaining and“improving” life) and(selectively) letting death) towards a new modality ofpower configurationnow aimedat to govern was gradually transformed from the power to kill (or suspend politics looking into the conceptual building blocks ofbiopolitics. To better understand what this means,my proposal is that we beginby biological terms–which defines who we are, how we live and how we die. 1 This also implied that highly visible forms ofpower exercise shifted Firstly, inconceptualizing biopolitics–originally named –Foucaultretraced how,modernity,in thetransition to power the which weexist, thinkandact. determines theconditionsunder in thecomplex assemblage that reproduction, sexuality andrace grasp thecentrality ofgender, is indispensable tobetter conceptualframeBiopolitics anatomo- DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 4 criminology andsexology (and the start of the movement towards visible, exclude, stigmatizeandpunish. This is the domainofpedagogy, used to classify, surveil, disciplineandcontrol, but alsoincite,make of which overlap with previously existing modesofdomestication– maze ofpower: discourses,norms,devices andinterventions–many and hygiene. On the flip-side,biopolitics comprises a microphysical particular epidemics,as well as the connectedrealm ofurban planning of “public health”, gestated inearly modernity to control diseases,in of “Malthusian rationalities”. But it alsoencompasses the initialstages systematically contested and, not surprisingly perennially revived realm also homogenization, differentiation andspatialization). This is the and other measurements, techniques ofcontrol andmodulation,but and techniques for the macro-management ofpopulations(birthrates and bodiesisbifurcated. On the one hand, it unfolded into theories devices and techniques. and within it,individualbodies,became the mainfocus of this web of central role. In the transition, the “political body” (societies asa whole) “scientific” constructedmarkers anddifferentiators of“sex”, implicit supremacy of the colonial enterprise. From the 17 homogenization ofEuropean societiesandmore importantly, the determining who will live and who will die,but alsoensures the desired of the biopolitical equation.It ideologically grounds the criteria for societies. practices becamea key piecein the wider project ofnormalization the “species”, but alsobecause the disciplining ofsexual roles and reproduction, it functionsasa link between individualbodiesand central to both these forms ofpower deployment, because through today, neuroscience). psychology, psychoanalysis and later, socioandpsycho-biology and Secondly, this new form ofpower deployment centered on lives “Sex”–male and female differences andsexual practices–was 2 Race,or racially marked bodies,isanother crucialpiece th century onwards, DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 5 the promise ofequality projected by the enlightenment revolutions. in a newly established scale of values that was inopencontradiction with (such asinsanity) andpractices(such asabortionor same-sex relations) taxonomies. This positionedgroups, individuals,bodies,conditions in these configurations,unfolded into a multiplicity of hierarchies and the connectionsbetween biopolitics and“stateofexception” incontemporary conditions. 4. In the 2000’s, Italian philosopher pulled this thread further in his criticalinvestigation of barriers to slave abolition andracialequality. stratagem to bypass equality. A vast literature exists inrelation to how biopolitcs created unsurpassable beautifully retraces how the modernreconfiguring of theEuropean gender andsexuality systems hasbeen a 3. The historian Thomas Laqueur, in his landmark book: writing about it in the 1970’s, gender was fully settled asa legitimate conceptualcategory. 2. Iamusing “sex” asit appearsinFoucault’s writings. It isimportant to recall that not even when was particular modeofpower exercise as“regulation or politics of life itself”. itself 1. Afer thirty years ofFoucault’s elaborations on the theme, Nikolas Rose,in his landmark book subjectification. In a recent paper on COVID-19 and biopolitics, the Swiss as to better articulate them with liberal modesofgoverning and conceptualization ofgovernmentality that enrichesprevious reflections, surface of liberal democracies. 20 in which of biopolitics in modernity, Foucault has infact chartered the grounds of Nazi-Fascism and the camps.Inmapping the birthandproliferation it is well known, these streams were expanded towards the catastrophe fittest (easily intertwining withcapitalism’s competitionprinciples). As politics andrelated currents ofsocialDarwinism – the survival of the would bequickly transformed into the “scientificbedrock” ofeugenic of Favored Races intheStruggleforLife On theOriginofSpecies byMeans ofNatural Selection,orthePreservation (2007), examines the complex contemporary reconfigurations ofbiopower and biopolitics, defining this It isnot difficult tosee how in the19 Another building block of the biopolitical frameis the th century totalitariantemptations werebeneath the gestated 4 Making Sex:BodyandGenderFrom theGreeks toFreud (1859) entered this landscape. It th century, Darwin’s book, Politics of Life of Politics 3 , DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 6 problem that remains to beaddressed more thoroughly: the excessive Although these critiquesare insightfuland valuable, there isone selected a few bibliographic references to inspire suchanexercise. including those developed by feminist andpost-colonial thinkers. I have be exempted from critique. A vast amount ofre-interpretations exist, model that focuses in: governing, shifted to the management ofsmallpox or the inoculation institutions. But his later reflections, more akin with liberalmodesof (and lepers) that ramifiedintostrict surveillance, disciplining andclosed derived from his examination of the Renaissanceconfinement of leprosy scholar Philip Sarasin(2020) notes that early Foucault’s writings basically While Foucault’s work isnot exactly circumventable, it isnot to general.” smallpox despiteinoculation,andthestatisticaleffects on thepopulationin inoculation, theprobability ofanindividualdyingorbeinginfectedby what effects,withmortality rate, lesionsorafter-effects,therisksof “knowing howmanypeopleare infectedwithsmallpox,atwhatage,

(in Foucault, (in Security, Territory, Population, “right tolife”ofembryos. religion inthebattles aroundthe the roleplayedby politicized forbiopolitical, example, than Nothing ismore flagrantly 10).

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DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 7 COVID-19 conditions. religious incontemporary biopolitics cannot beeasily evaded under reproduction. As it will beseenfurther ahead, the fullentering of the interpretations ofsexual difference purposely designed toattain human justified on religious doctrinalgrounds but onschematic Darwinian The same applies to more recent crusades against gander that are not politicized religion in the battles around the “right to life” ofembryos. is more flagrantly biopolitical, for example, than the role played by scholars have not examined this shift asit would berequired. Nothing the biopolitical undercurrent and,from my point of view, Foucauldian 1980’s onwards, transformed religious institutionsincore actorsof subjectification derive directly from the religious. explicit that the modernpracticeofgoverning, surveillance and and governing–is pervasive in his theorizing. Inmany texts he makes religious–more specifically ofChristianconceptionsdisciplining disciplining. This isnot a problem ofFoucault, as the specter of the emphasis on the secularity ofbiopolitical configurationsofpower and to a less extent, inKorea and Taiwan, emerges. It isnot difficult to series–a pattern repeated inmany other placessuchasSingapore and, compellingly describedby Cai Yiping in the first conversation of this recapture what happened in Wuhan andother locations inChina–so BiopoliticsCOVID-19 as However,not did intriguinghe turnthatwitness the from the Biopolitics isnot, therefore, anintellectual specter. If we always doneinmodernity:aspure “biomass” are finallyabletogovernthepopulationasthey have,more orlessopenly, democratic obstaclesunderthepretext of“health,” even“survival,” they impose pandemicdictatorshiponentire populations.Gettingridofall “It lookslikeabiopoliticaldream: governments,advisedbyphysicians,

(Sarasin, 2020,p.1) DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 8 by the pandemicallowed for the excessive useofcriminaljusticeand undemocratic measures, the surveillance and the socialpanic triggered show, even inplaces where nationalstatesdid not implement stark authoritarianism. And, asa number ofpress andresearch reports El Salvador, Ecuador andHonduras it enabled further steps towards in the administration,particularly in the Ministry ofHealth. InBolivia, allowed Bolsonaro to drastically enlarge the numbersof the military Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Venezuela. Inneighboring Brazil, it installed suchasEgypt, China, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia,India, in places where authoritarianregimes, or precursors, are already hover above world politics. Measures ofexceptionality were adopted states ofexception ina time when the shadows ofFascism onceagain of violence, bringing into light the affinitiesbetween biopolitics and States justification to exert arbitrary powers andamplify themonopoly technologies. not just reactivated, but it isnow expanded andoptimizedby digital realize that the “leper model” ofconfinement andsurveillance hasbeen regimes. 6. Inmany ofRiodeJaneiro’s favelas for example, narco-traffic groups have established quarantinesandcurfew Nikolas RoseandPaul Rabinow oncontemporary interpretations ofbiopower. a RosiBraidotti paper onBiopower andNecropolitcs, Achille Mbembeconference onNecropolitcs, a paper by 5. An entry of the Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy onfeminist critiquesof the Foucauldian theory ofpower, to flatten thecurve and avoid thecollapse of the healthsystem. This upgraded medicalcare, socialdistancing policies or even lockdowns States optedfor strategiesofaggregate epidemiological measurement, non-State actors. microlevel arbitrariness by the police, but alsoby other Stateactorsand Not less significantly, theCOVID-19 public healthcrisis gave However, this was not the caseeverywhere. A large number of 6

DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 9 them evoked the transcendental or naturalimmunity of the people as Brazilian entrepreneur told the country’s Supreme Court). Someof the closure ofeconomicactivities(“toavoid killing enterprises”, asa isolation” which (in only the most asvulnerable toprevent are confined) number ofpeople are infected, the better) andmeasures of“vertical political actorsadvocated for “herd immunity” (the sooner the largest this category (even when the first three have later changed views). These dictators ofBelorussia and Turkmenistan andDaniel Ortega fallinto Lopes Obrador, Trump, Bolsonaro, the Swedish government, the leaders, denied the scale andgravity of the pandemic.Johnson, Duterte, A more limited number ofstates,many of them led by strident populist discipline) acquiescence (internalized to protect oneselfandothers. relies bothonstatemanagerial techniques andindividualsocietal as contemporary versions of the smallpox-inoculation model, which from absent. As notedby Sarasin, these responses should beread remain intact or are being reconstructed. Even so,biopolitics isfar happened mostly in those countries where democratic welfare states addressing the managing of life andrequires further investigation, as But on the other, it alsoreactivates a religious andsacrificialmodeof the survival of the fittest asananalogy tofierce capitalist competition. deleterious versions of19 vulnerable. I would add that, on the one hand it revolves andrevives or necropolitics, asit entailsa large number ofdeaths,mostly of the Most principally he underlined that it isa manifestation ofeugenics, that view themselves (and are eventually aspastors ofa flock. viewed) illustrate what Foucault definedas a pastoralmodeof governing: States though sounding asa well as“God’s protection” asa justification for letting the virusrunfree. A third and further disturbing pattern must also to beidentified. The Italian philosopher Roberto Sposito(2020) observes that laissez faire th century neo-Darwinism, which glorifies response, this optioninfact may DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 10 in her blog.in her interview complicated, Irecommend you beginby watching the adopted indistinct spheres ofmanagement. Ifall this sounds too pandemic has changed or elsebecausedifferent models have been the stateresponses have been hybrid–either because the vision of the national experiences fit into thesepatterns, becauseinmany cases himself revisits on his paper. it doesnot entirely fit into themodern logic ofimmunity that Sposito One area to explore in the DAWN conversation isperhaps how

with the master ofbiopolitics postedby Clare O’Farrel taxonomies. economic structures andbiopolitical derivefromboth These inequalities that are traversed by inequalities. formations acrosssocial distributed democratic, itseffectsare unevenly potentially Though SARS-CoV-2is exquisite fictional DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 11 of people to quarantineandexercise socialdistancing requires that between richandpoor neighborhoods. More poignantly yet, the ability infections varies greatly across highly unequalspatialpatterns, suchas the creation ofnew spatialrules. As we know, the pathsandrhythm of spaces, on the other, the biopolitics of the pandemicalways implies social, racialandgender hierarchies are projected or materialized in infection. of the health andeducationsectorsare exposed to higher risksof from biopolitical constructionsofsex roles–means that female workers can alsoconsider that the gendered divisionof labor–which derives of infections anddeathsamongst black people in the USandBrazil. We biopolitical taxonomies. Oneevident illustrationis the larger number These inequalitiesderive from botheconomicstructures and distributed across socialformations that are traversed by inequalities. though SARS-CoV-2 ispotentially democratic,itseffects are unevenly responses to the pandemic.For example, differential vulnerabilities: as the vectors of the disease. This began with the accusationsand stigmatize andproduce violence against “others” who are portrayed to COVID-19 have propelled discoursesandpractices that blame, epidemiological control andmore recently HIV/AIDS, the response unequally positionedinpre-existing spatial hierarchies. Spatialization potentially impliesdetrimentaleffects onbodies/persons some countriesrelied on the biopolitical taxonomies ofsex-gender. the spatializationofquarantineandsocialdistancing, for which have prevailed, the control of COVID-19 has beenmainly done through the poorer. And everywhere, except incases where denialist ideologies they have space to doso, but spaceisa very scarce resource amongst Another key area concerns spatialization.On the one hand, It isalsoimportant to mapout the biopolitical imprintsof Lastly, asin the caseof the long history ofsyphilis DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 12 with chronic diseases–including people living with HIV/AIDS–could be including public officials,shamelessly declared that elderly andpeople lethality of the pandemic.InBrazil, the USand the UK,denialist voices, not follow the rules, even when he had previously denied the scale and India. In the Philippines, Duterteauthorized execution of those who did coercion and“compulsory disinfection”, asit was done with migrantsin with quarantinerules have been targeted by intensifiedsurveillance, countless countries, poor andmarginalizedpeople who cannot comply fallacies ofsocialDarwinism that gained leverage with the pandemic.In as it had beendonein the past with prostitutes infected with syphilis. frontlines ofCOVID-19 containment were ordered to shave their heads, China, shockingly enough,female health professionals working on the people with disabilitiesandpoor women are alsobeing stigmatized.In As notedby Gita SeninIndia,marginalizedgroups suchas the Dalits, exposed to infection) have alsobeendiscriminatedin various countries. Trump andBolsonaro’s ministers.Health professionals (who are most fear-mongering against the “Chinese”, magnified by thediscoursesof immediately placing non-binary people ina situation ofgreater risk rules reify the biological determinismofsexual dimorphism, these problematic policies, Iobserved that sex/gender segregation social distancing inLatin American countries.Ina for choosing sex-gender and the maincriteria for determining rules of SPW SpecialIssue you will findanindepth look into theimplications gendered conditionsor effects of thepandemic. In theaforementioned analysis Further exploring the COVID-19 implications for feminist sacrificed because they were not productive enoughanymore. Stigmatization isalso linked to statearbitrariness and the Inevitably, many of the illustrationsgiven above are about short article about DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 13 They have alsopressured for reproductive health andabortionservices, the recognition ofLGBT rightsor, inEurope, the falloffertility rates. that COVID-19 was divinepunishment for the legalization ofabortion, healing powers ofGod.Not surprisingly, these same voices declared of biomedicalresponses andstated that people should trust in the questioned the existence of the virus, disqualified theeffectiveness prohibition ofcults.Bothconservative Catholic andEvangelical voices America and the US,pastors have contestedsocialisolation and the it changed itsposition when the Italian situation worsened. InLatin churches andchallenged the measures implemented inRome, though across the globe. Even the Vatican initially criticized the closure of campaigns have reacted negatively to rules promoting socialisolation COVID-19 pandemic.Religiousinstitutionsinvolved inanti-gender secular institutionsandactors with the biopolitical dimensionsof the Another aspect that was chartered was the engagement ofnon- grounds the sexual divisionof labor andgendered power inequalities. further crystallize the naturalization of the sex/gender order, which and vulnerability in the faceofStatecoercion. The rules contribute to ally Steve Bannon–despite their substantive differences–interpret the examining how bothPutin’s guru Alexandr Dugin and Trump’s old published by yet threatened by de-democratization. Inanother provocative article with the opportunity to capture more political power in countriesnot that tragedies that may result from the pandemicmay provide them and attack feminism, abortion andsexual diversity. Shealsosuggests these forces to reinforce traditional gender roles, sexual dimorphism abnormality triggered by COVID-19 creates favorable conditionsfor essential. as well asmedical care for transgender persons to be labelled asnon- In OpenDemocracy, The Nation , Benjamin Teitelbaum explores this subject, Claire Provost

argues that the state of argues thatstate the DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 14 Foucauldian theory ofpower Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy onfeminist critiquesof the An Interview with RobertoSposito A very brief recommended bibliography unchartered terrain ofcontemporary biopolitical conditions. see it,feminists are ina privileged position to critically examine this imprints andeffects of thepandemic hasbeenscarcely explored. AsI has beenpublished recently, this particular angle of the biopolitical repudiation ofmodernity initsmultiple manifestations. pandemic asanepochalandsystemic event that may favor their views of by Phillip Sarasin Understanding the Coronavirus epidemic with Foucault SPW CompilationonCOVID-19 &Biopolitics Biopower Today Necropolitics Biopower andNecropolitics, Although a massive literature onCOVID-19 andbiopolitics , by Achille Mbembe , by Nikolas RoseandPaul Rabinow

by RosiBraidotti

DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 15 working onanti-genderpoliticsglobally. and isaDAWN Board member Sonia was DAWN’s SRHRResearch Coordinator of GenderStudiesat LSE. institutions, more recently at theDepartment in theSouth”.Soniahaslectured at variousacademic and “Weighing UpCairo:EvidencefromWomen Rights: FeministPerspectives fromtheSouth” languages, suchas prolific authorwithdozensofpublications inseveral co-chairs Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW) Interdisciplinary Association for AIDS(ABIA) Sonia isaresearch associate at theBrazilian Brazil’s firstfeministNGOs equality, health&sexuality. Sheisthefounder ofone is aBrazilian feministactivistworkingongender SONIA CORRÊA “Population andReproductive (SOS Corpo,1981) . Sheiscurrently . Sheisa . , and DAWN TALKS ON COVID - 19 - SONIA CORRÊA - JULY 2020 16 WITH DAWN FEMINISTSABOUT THE A SERIESOFFOUR CONVERSATIONS Please consider theenvironment before printingthisPDF. dawnnet.org 11:00 amRiodeJaneiro |7:30pmNew Delhi|2:00pmUTC THURSDAY, JULY 02,2020 available via Registration on COVID-19 PANDEMIC. Zoom

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