By António Carvalho and Irina Velicu.
The current pandemic may be seen as another confirmation that industrialization, globalization, and the rapid consumption of all resources maximize the kinetic capacity of dangerous pathogens. The war machine against ‘virulent others’ – from nature’s rebels to pathogens – has never really taken a break. Ironically, such destruction of homes or habitats forces many of us now into a privileged ‘stay at home’, an emergent ontology of isolation which reinvents biopolitics and immunopolitics. What is the human political meaning of this ontology of isolation, a passive version of the ‘for the good of mankind’?