The current Corona crisis has (again) laid bare the differential logics at the heart of racial gendered capitalism. Whether it be the continuing necropolitical responses to the flight and movement of those rendered migrants, refugees and asylum seekers; the further expansion of neoliberal securitization and policing alongside intersectional vectors of vulnerabilities; the state sanctioned abandonment of vulnerable groups through underfunding and austerity; or articulations of the gendered and racialized division of labor, often termed ‘essential work’– although Covid-19 makes no difference, the crisis unfolds alongside differential vectors of exploitation and domination. This course engages with this differentiality by drawing on key texts from political, social and cultural theories, especially from black, postcolonial, feminist, critical racism and migration studies. Tracing the historicity of global pandemics and their linkages to enslavement, colonialism and global capitalism, the course analyses epidemics as social and political conjunctures. During the course, we will also analyse particular but entangled fields of the pandemic, such as public health policies and medical racism, societal structures of care work, containment and carceration, migration, global inequalities and poverty. Besides the reading and discussion of texts, students will work on and present small practical research projects.

Last modified

• 06/10/2022

Creator

• Thompson, Vanessa E.

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-hv3k-xf80

Keyword

• coronavirus

Date created

• 2021

Rights statement

• In Copyright

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International