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Paper short abstract

This paper asks how different “testing logics” shaped Austria’s pandemic governance. Based on ongoing fieldwork, we trace policymakers’ and experts’ understandings of how, why, and by whom tests should be used when negotiating the biopolitical mandate to secure and enhance life beyond the clinic.

Paper long abstract

Testing for SARS-CoV-2 infections played a prominent role in pandemic governance, constituting the biggest global testing effort to date. With the second-highest per capita test rate worldwide and the costs of roughly 208 million tests covered by the Health Ministry, Austria had a substantial share in this global testing program. This paper examines policymakers and experts’ normative ideas about how, why, and by whom tests ought to be used. We conceptualize these understandings of reasonable and unreasonable testing as “testing logics,” informed by specific ways of deploying tests and (e)valuating them. We argue that situated practices of using tests bring forth different states of infection and interpretations of the biopolitical mandate. Based on ongoing data collection through semi-structured expert interviews and document analysis, we trace how tests were used to secure and enhance life beyond traditional clinical and public health logics. Analyzing how testing mediated relationships between authorities and citizens or between epidemiologically in/secure bodies, we show how biomedical testing was configured otherwise. We examine how these testing logics entered into conflict and conversation throughout the pandemic, exploring moments when competing testing logics were aligned and others when they generated friction. By zooming in on more-than-diagnostics test uses, we contribute to research on the relationship between testing practices, states of infections, and enactments of the biopolitical mandate in the governance of disease outbreaks.

[SARS-CoV-2 testing; Austria; biopolitics; pandemic governance]