Abstract
Exploring in free prose a quarantine-days private experience, I use theoretical references from Medical Anthropology to critically assess the wide use of Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics to analyze the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic. I defend that the monolithic use of the term in its singular form drives its analytic potential away from the plurality of experiences it tries to apprehend and narrate. I suggest that in order to refine the adequacy of our reflections, rather than biopolitics, social scientists trace the nuanced nature of its source, biopower. I then present and explore João Biehl’s ethnography on the negotiation and implementation of the AIDS policy in Brazil as an exemplary case of the tracking of post-disciplinary and fragmented biopower. In the early days of the pandemic, I use Biehl’s diagnostic of a pharmaceuticalization of Brazilian public health to imagine the challenges it poses to the tackling of covid-19.
Keywords
Covid-19; Michel Foucault; biopolitics; biopower; pharmaceuticalization of health