Andityas Soares de Moura Costa Matos & Francis García Collado
B & W 229 x 152 mm | Perfect Bound on White w/Matte Laminate | 88 pages | Paperback ISBN 978-1-910761-15-1 | E-book (ePDF) ISBN 978-1-910761-16-8 | 8 February 2022
Viral Critique is available from Blackwell’s (UK) and major online bookshops internationally at a recommended retail price of 12.00 GBP.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, critique has reached a certain limit. In the twenty-first century, our world can no longer be analyzed through the frameworks of the society of discipline, of control, of consumers, or of the spectacle. Indeed, neoliberal capitalism has fused these variants into an undifferentiated amalgam that denies any experience that does not submit to its quantitative determinations.
The pandemic enters this scene as much more than a disease of the body. It colonizes affects, imposing an omnipresent fear that generates a global reorganization under the sign of (bio)security. To fight the pandemic, it is necessary—in addition to doctors, hospitals, drugs, and security measures—to explore the lines of escape, the mutations that will be required, and the potentialities of a viral critique.
This book offers a unique contribution to contemporary debates around critical theory and biopolitics. Written from Brazil and Spain in the midst of the pandemic, it starts from the failures of biopolitical analysis to grapple with the unfolding international recompositions of politics and economy, building a biopotential reading of the new structures of bioarztchial power, a kind of reconfiguration of sovereign and medical dominions. The book offers a challenging and deeply original view, full of new concepts and ideas.
Introduction / Coronavirus: Thanos’ dream
1. First Pandemic Philosophy / Agamben, Nancy, Esposito, Žižek, Butler, Han, Preciado, Bifo, Badiou, Coccia, and Mbembe
2. Between the Living and the Non-living / What is a virus?
3. Beyond the Opposition of Nature and Culture / Event, Intrusion of Gaia and Anthropocene
4. Control of the Pandemic / The European Sovereign Model and the Asian Algorithmic Model
5. The Thanatopolitical and Necropolitical Responses of Bioarztchy / Fear and Governmentality in the Pandemic
6. Biopotency and Bioemergence / Mutating to Sur/vive
Conclusion / What happened to the future? It will never be like before
References
About the Authors
Andityas Soares de Moura Costa Matos is Doctor in Law and Justice by the Law School of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Brazil). Doctor in Philosophy by the University of Coimbra (Portugal). Tenured Professor of Law Philosophy at the UFMG’s Law School. Permanent Member of the Postgraduate Program in Law at the UFMG’s Law School. Visiting Professor at the Barcelona University’s Law School (2015-2016) and in the Cordoba University’s Law School (2021-2022), both in Spain. Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Transdisciplinary Studies at UFMG (2017-2018). Researcher at several universities, such as University of Barcelona, University of Girona and University of Buenos Aires. Author of philosophical studies such as: O Grande Sistema do Mundo: Do Pensamento Grego Originário à Mecânica Quântica [The Great System of the World: From Original Greek Thought to Quantum Mechanics] (Belo Horizonte, Fino Traço, 2014), Filosofía Radical y Utopía: Inapropiabilidad, An-arquía, A-nomía [Radical Philosophy and Utopia: Inapropriability, An-archy, A-nomie] (Bogotá, Siglo del Hombre, 2015) and Representação Política Contra Democracia Radical: Uma Arqueologia (A)teológica do Poder Separado [Political Representation Against Radical Democracy: An (A)theological Archeology of Separate Power] (Belo Horizonte, Fino Traço, 2019). With Francis García Collado, is co-author of Mas Allá de la Biopolítica: Biopotencia, Bioarztquía, Bioemergencia (Girona, Documenta Universitaria, 2020) [Beyond Biopolitics: Biopotency, Bioarztchy, Bioemergence].
Francis García Collado is Doctor in Philosophy by the University of Barcelona (UB, Spain). Professor of Philosophy, History of Scientific Thought and Ethics in Advertising and Public Relations in the School of Philosophy and Arts of the University of Girona (UdG). Evaluating member of the UdG Ethics and Biosafety Committee. Professor of Psychology at the School of Science and Communications at the International Universitat of Catalunya (UIC). Professor of Theory of Education in the School of Social Sciences of the Universitat of Vic—Central University of Catalunya (UVic-UCC). Professor in the Master of Neuroeducation at UVic-UCC. Professor of Ethics and Communications Psychology, Psychology and Sociology in the Superior School of Business Sciences and Public Relations (UB-ESRP). Has taught at the Centre of Human Rights of the Federal University of Goiás’ Law School (UFG, Brazil) and has been visiting Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Brazil). He is the co-coordinator of the Philosophy Conferences Cycle organized by the Barcelona Board and the Barcelona Library Consortium since 2007 and has been Professor of Philosophy at Casa Elizalde for more than fifteen years. Author of the poetry work Grhitos [Screams] (Barcelona, La Busca, 2012) and various philosophical essays in books published in Catalonia and Brazil. With Andityas Soares de Moura Costa Matos, is co-author of Mas Allá de la Biopolítica: Biopotencia, Bioarztquía, Bioemergencia (Girona, Documenta Universitaria, 2020) [Beyond Biopolitics: Biopotency, Bioarztchy, Bioemergence].
Footnote/Endnote:
Andityas Soares de Moura Costa Matos and Francis García Collado, Viral Critique: Bioarztchy Against Biopotency in the COVID-19 Age (Oxford: Counterpress, 2022).
Bibliography:
Soares de Moura Costa Matos, Andityas, and Francis García Collado. Viral Critique: Bioarztchy Against Biopotency in the COVID-19 Age. Oxford: Counterpress, 2022.