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- Convenors:
-
Robin Rodd
(Duke Kunshan University)
Miguel Vatter (Alfred Deakin Institute of Citizenship and Globalisation)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Vitality
- Location:
- NIKERI KC2.211
- Sessions:
- Thursday 24 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
Short Abstract:
The management of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a proliferation of new borders and sensoring technologies giving rise to debate on the conflicts between right to health and right to mobility. This panel interrogates the subjectivities associated with new forms of health bordering and sensoring.
Long Abstract:
The management of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a proliferation of new controls and borders giving rise to a politicized discussion on the conflicts between right to health and right to mobility. From the administration of vaccine mandates, to track and trace apps that disable entry to venues or urban zones, to city-wide lockdowns and sealed international borders, countries have developed various strategies to contain COVID-19 by restricting movement. More recently, China has introduced ‘closed loop management’ of entire cities and the mass deportation of covid-19 positive cases to quarantine camps. These new procedures mean that borders can no longer be imagined as unidimensional political structures dividing states, are increasingly justified in public health terms, and exist in nested hierarchies from the microscopic to the planetary. Mobility for many is now contingent on passing through several borders that exist in overlapping jurisdictions, requiring the ongoing updating of multiple biolegitimacy platforms. While many of these policies and technologies have been critically received by citizens throughout the world, the the bio-digital infrastructure for regulating human movement and measuring the legitimacy of one’s health and political status remains prevalent. This panel seeks to interrogate the convergence of the technosphere (sensoring technologies and biolegitimacy apps) and the zoosphere (COVID-19 and other population health dynamics). What terms of debate, dissent and justification exist around globally diverse experiences of health bordering? What new subjectivities have emerged alongside these new forms of bordering and sensoring? And how do these intersect with existing socioeconomic cleavages?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 24 November, 2022, -Elena Lopez Andersson (James Cook University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores Sweden's early COVID-19 anti-bordering regime and the onset of a new dynamic that not only exacerbated existing borders but set the path towards an increasingly hierarchical social order, and spelling peril to all aspects of life.
Paper long abstract:
An outlier among global efforts to control the Corona virus, the Swedish government's early no-lockdown logic was considered successful despite exceptionally high deathrates. Now reports and literatures identify multiple failures, however the relationship between the seemingly contradictory dynamics that emerged in relation to the rejection of bordering remain unexplored. This paper explores the relationship between Sweden's pandemic no-border policy during the first wave of the pandemic vis-à-vis its biopolitical historical context, folkhemmet (the People's Home), a nationbuilding project associated with Swedish social democracy. Aided by Brian Massumi's concept ontopower, I draw attention to that while the country's early COVID-19 approach sprung from its biopolitical history, this frame is inadequate for fully grasping the situation. I argue that whereas biopolitical techniques were deployed to manage the population during the early stage of the pandemic, ontopowers by-passed enhancing life, and re-activating folkhemmet's exclusionary mechanisms, they charged the population with pre-empting and eliminating not-yet-existing future threats. I conclude that although Sweden's response to COVID-19 ensured freedom of movement, it signalled the arrival of new exclusionary borders and a form of violence that emerged within the population, rather than against democratic forms of government. While a unique case, it contributes to debates on rights and bordering experiences.
Rey Tiquia (University of Melbourne)
Paper short abstract:
Qi is a life force.A psychophysical energy that generates emotions and materializes qi transformations from endogenous organs. “Qi comes into being as the concrete manifestation of spacetime”. Can modern technology detect the mobility of this life force? A case study shows how absurd this can be.
Paper long abstract:
Qi is an animating life force. A psychophysical energy that generates human emotions, feelings and humour. Qi from the humoral acutracts originates from the endogenous organs and then liaises with the body’s extremities. A classicist TCM practitioner Chen Ding San, drew a circular and quadratic diagram that explores the origins of Chinese medicine. The circular diagram represents ‘time’ while the square diagram represents ‘space.With the unity of space and time, “qi comes into being as the concrete manifestation of spacetime” [John Major]. Chinese medicine identifies 'seven emotions' of happiness, anger, worry, pensiveness, sadness, fear and terror as normal human spiritual expressions. Sudden emotional outburst like being too angry or too sad can affect the circulation of qi. To address clinical patterns brought about by extremes of emotions, TCM prescribes balancing.This is the emergent therapeutic practice of ‘Eastern Psychophysical Therapy’. I present a case of someone suffering from a disharmony in the flow of his gall bladder meridian qi to whom I administered chronoacupuncture. After his therapy, Tony rang back saying health authorities asked that he undergo quarantine.I asked myself:how can they quarantine a psychophysical energetic qi flow embedded in the body of a human or a non-human microbe?Anthropologist Philippe Descolla pointed out: “for thousands of years,viruses,microbes,animals,plants...have all shared the feast of life (sometimes tragically) for us. The idea that we can leave the chain of life and live in a bubble of isolation is absurd.”