A Pandemic and the Politics of Life

9789385606342

New Delhi, 2021

Language: ENGLISH

208 pages

Price INR 450.00
Book Club Price INR 360.00
INR 450.00
In stock
SKU
LWB1315

Over one hundred million infections, and two million deaths, worldwide, with more than ten million cases and a lakh-and-a-half deaths in India. A Pandemic and the Politics of Life unravels the specifics of the Indian experience of battling COVID-19, while adopting an international perspective, in order to analyse the why and how of this public health emergency; the neoliberal response by the state; the production of an unanticipated politics of life; and the dramatic desire for a new kind of public power.

Written during an intense time, this monograph closely follows the progress of the virus, focusing on three themes: (i) the outbreak as an epidemiological crisis compounded by an economic crisis, a migrant crisis, and a political crisis; (ii) the presence of the marching migrant as the figure of this crisis; and (iii) the emergence of bio-politics from below as a reaction of the lower classes.

Over twelve months into 'fighting' this deadly virus, we now have a remedy in the form of a vaccine—but is that all the remedy we need? The author raises and answers some critical questions around the way issues of life and death are negotiated in a neoliberal order, and on what we mean by care, protection and solidarity in a post-COVID-19 world.

Ranabir Samaddar

Ranabir Samaddar is currently the Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Calcutta Research Group. He belongs to the critical school of thinking and is considered one of the foremost theorists in the field of migration and forced migration studies. His writings on migration, forms of labour, urbanisation, and political struggles have signalled a new turn in post-colonial thinking. Among his influential works is The Marginal Nation: Transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal (1999). His recent works are Karl Marx and the Postcolonial Age (2018) and The Postcolonial Age of Migration (2020)..