What Makes Life Grievable? Discursive Distribution of Vulnerability in the Pandemic

What Makes Life Grievable? Discursive Distribution of Vulnerability in the Pandemic

COVID-19

vulnerability

precarity

grievability

pandemic politics

This article examines Judith Butler’s concepts of vulnerability andgrievability in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and biopowerpractices introduced in the name of the protection of the people. Ananalysis of the elite political discourse in Czechia, Germany, Great Britain,and Slovakia in the first three months of the pandemic explores howvulnerability was constructed and distributed among the respectivepopulations. We identified two prevailing discursive frames – science andsecurity. Within the first, vulnerability was constructed in terms of biologicalcharacteristics, rendering elderly, disabled, and chronically ill bodies asalready lost and ungrievable. Within the security frame, Roma or migrantpopulations’ vulnerability to the virus has been discursively shifted intobeing seen as a threat, while vulnerability itself was recognized more as afeature of institutions or society. Thus, despite the claims that ‘we are all inthis together’, the pandemic has exposed how our vulnerability andinterdependency are embedded within existing social structures.

Maďarová, Zuzana

Hardoš, Pavol

Ostertágová, Alexandra

Czech Journal of International Relations; Vol. 55 No. 4 (2020); 11-30

2788-2993

2788-2985

10.32422/mv.55.4

Institute of International Relations Prague

2020-12-01

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0

application/pdf

eng

info:eu-repo/semantics/article

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Research Articles