Nature or technics? Sars-CoV-2, new materialisms and critique of the Anthropocene

The Sars-CoV-2 pandemic urges environmental sociology to reflect on the appropriate approaches to account for it. For long the discipline was dominated by the debate between realism and constructivism, de facto privileging the latter. The "ontological turn” in the social and human sciences has brought to the fore anti-dualistic materialisms, on paper suited to deal with a socio-material hybrid such as Sars-CoV-2. However, the emancipatory implications drawn from the critique of modern dualisms are not reflected in a situation in which value extraction coincides ever more with a denial of the distinction between nature and technology. The debate over the Anthropocene provides a perspective useful to bring clarity. Copyright © FrancoAngeli.

Preparedness as Governmentality. Probing the Italian Management of the Covid-19 Emergency

The paper deals with preparedness, a take on biological threats of growing academic and policy relevance, as a clue to ongoing changes in governmental approaches. We first address its features. Gauged against the security rationale of biopolitical governmentality, as discussed by Foucault, we argue these show “post-securitarian” traits. We then focus on the Italian management of the Covid-19 emergency, examining the main regulatory documents enforced by the Government during the pandemic, from its beginning, in January 2020, to July 2021. Results show that the response to the pandemic has been patchy;ample recourse to disciplinary measures created tensions with the securitarian logic of health apparatuses;the preventive character of many approaches and instruments, including vaccinations, contrasts with the precautionary framework of their actual implementation;and the limited role played by preparedness at a surface level is counterweighed by the post-securitarian implications of some measures and of the blurring of the very distinction between biopolitical failure and success. Relevant questions arise concerning the handling of new and emergent threats and, more broadly, the evolution of governmental powers in current societies. Copyright © 2021 Luigi Pellizzoni, Barbara Sena

CHRONOPOLITICS OF THE EXCEPTION. PANDEMIC AND LATE CAPITALISM

The debate over the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic developed in the early months of 2020 set a contrast between those claiming the emergency measures to be extraordinary but justified and legally grounded and those who inscribed them in a process of normalization of the state of exception. After noting shortcomings of both positions, the paper argues that the state of exception that is being imposed is based on a peculiar ontology and anticipatory politics. The first, contrary to what is assumed by plenty of social theory, builds not on the affirmation but on a denial of the distinction between nature and society;the second relies on a temporal structure that is no longer the linear one typical of modernity, but is rather akin to Pauline messianism. To understand today's dynamics of domination and assess the social forces opposing them, an accurate analysis of the politics of time established by late capitalism is indispensable.