Biopower in the Pandemic Age

Abstract

In this article, I take up the concept of biopower (Foucault) and its reformulation as digital control (Deleuze) to reflect on the current social mutation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe it is necessary to question the terms of the debate around the restriction of freedoms, given that it assumes that we remain within the horizon of a sovereign political power, ignoring its mutation into disciplinary and then biopolitical power. I argue that control reaches its apogee with health and medical power, for in global medical management it has found the technological model for exercising the new domination. In this context, I suggest taking up the philosophical question of our conception of health following Nietzsche and Canguilhem.