William Watkin – författare

Aylan, Isis, Begum, Grenfell, Trump. Harambe, Guantanamo, Syria, Brexit, Johnson. COVID, migrants, trolling, George Floyd, Trump!

Gazing over the fractured, contested territories of the current global situation, Watkin finds that all these diverse happenings have one element in common. They occur when biopolitical states, in trying to manage and protect the life rights of their citizens, habitually end up committing acts of coercion or disregard against the very people they have promised to protect. When states tasked with making us live find themselves letting us die, then they are practitioners of a particular kind of force that Watkin calls bioviolence.

This book explores and exposes the many aspects of contemporary biopower and bioviolence: neglect, exclusion, surveillance, regulation, encampment, trolling, fake news, terrorism and war. As it does so, it demonstrates that the very term ‘violence’ is a discursive construct, an effect of language, made real by our behaviours, embodied by our institutions and disseminated by our technologies. In short, bioviolence is how the contemporary powers that be make us do what they want.

Resolutely interdisciplinary, this book is suitable for all scholars, students and general readers in the fields of IR, political theory, philosophy, the humanities, sociology and journalism.

Aylan, Isis, Begum, Grenfell, Trump. Harambe, Guantanamo, Syria, Brexit, Johnson. COVID, migrants, trolling, George Floyd, Trump!

Gazing over the fractured, contested territories of the current global situation, Watkin finds that all these diverse happenings have one element in common. They occur when biopolitical states, in trying to manage and protect the life rights of their citizens, habitually end up committing acts of coercion or disregard against the very people they have promised to protect. When states tasked with making us live find themselves letting us die, then they are practitioners of a particular kind of force that Watkin calls bioviolence.

This book explores and exposes the many aspects of contemporary biopower and bioviolence: neglect, exclusion, surveillance, regulation, encampment, trolling, fake news, terrorism and war. As it does so, it demonstrates that the very term ‘violence’ is a discursive construct, an effect of language, made real by our behaviours, embodied by our institutions and disseminated by our technologies. In short, bioviolence is how the contemporary powers that be make us do what they want.

Resolutely interdisciplinary, this book is suitable for all scholars, students and general readers in the fields of IR, political theory, philosophy, the humanities, sociology and journalism.

This book considers how, during the unprecedented global lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the normal order of everyday life, of the rule of law, of power itself was interrupted, and hence the nomos of this earth was suspended.

Employing the term ‘herd immunity’ from vaccination science and global lockdown policy as a guiding theme, the book considers two central aspects of the pandemic. These are the function of herding and collecting as a definition of ontology after Alain Badiou, and the concept of immunity as a suspension of oppositional differences in the work of Roberto Esposito. It then considers how herd immunity not only disrupts the nomos but also suspends its significance as a guiding principle of state-sanctioned legal norms—and perhaps permanently. Providing critical readings of masking, social distancing, compliance, vulnerability, bubbles, immunity, breathing, anti-vaxxers, nudge theory, cocooning, lockdown, patient zero, and the many other terms that became commonplace between 2020 and 2022, the book traces a suspension of legal and social norms, a manipulation of our compliance using false science, and a reconfiguring of the social nomos, in light of the threats of the virus. In a highly original mix of contemporary and post-war continental philosophy, biopolitical theory, set theoretical mathematics, extensional logic, and the most up-to-date science in the area, it argues that lockdown was not some global, biopolitical power grab, but actually a weakening of power, of nomos.

This book will appeal to scholars and others in a range of disciplinary areas with interests in the legacy of Covid; but especially those working in the areas of continental philosophy, contemporary legal theory, and biopolitics.

This book considers how, during the unprecedented global lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the normal order of everyday life, of the rule of law, of power itself was interrupted, and hence the nomos of this earth was suspended.

Employing the term ‘herd immunity’ from vaccination science and global lockdown policy as a guiding theme, the book considers two central aspects of the pandemic. These are the function of herding and collecting as a definition of ontology after Alain Badiou, and the concept of immunity as a suspension of oppositional differences in the work of Roberto Esposito. It then considers how herd immunity not only disrupts the nomos but also suspends its significance as a guiding principle of state-sanctioned legal norms—and perhaps permanently. Providing critical readings of masking, social distancing, compliance, vulnerability, bubbles, immunity, breathing, anti-vaxxers, nudge theory, cocooning, lockdown, patient zero, and the many other terms that became commonplace between 2020 and 2022, the book traces a suspension of legal and social norms, a manipulation of our compliance using false science, and a reconfiguring of the social nomos, in light of the threats of the virus. In a highly original mix of contemporary and post-war continental philosophy, biopolitical theory, set theoretical mathematics, extensional logic, and the most up-to-date science in the area, it argues that lockdown was not some global, biopolitical power grab, but actually a weakening of power, of nomos.

This book will appeal to scholars and others in a range of disciplinary areas with interests in the legacy of Covid; but especially those working in the areas of continental philosophy, contemporary legal theory, and biopolitics.