States of Violence. Race, Capital and Sovereignty in the COVID-19 Era

States of Violence. A Conversation About Race, Capital and Sovereignty in the COVID-19 Era
October 22, 2020 at 2:30 PM
With Mohamad Amer Meziane (IRCPL) and Etienne Balibar (Columbia, French). Moderated by Nadia Abu El-Haj (Barnard, Anthropology).

2020 has already been marked by two major, historical events: COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. This dialogue is an attempt to determine how political philosophy might help us think about them. In particular, it will probe how the unfolding crisis might force us to rethink our concepts of violence and the political. The pandemic is now inseparable from the question of the state and of the forms of violence it deploys. Does this signal a ‘return’ of the state to the center of politics, or simply its unmasking? How are we to think about violence both before and after the pandemic? How do empire and colonialism still structure the present? To what extent is Islamophobia part of systemic racism and practices of surveillance? How does Islamophobia overlap with anti-Blackness both in Europe and the United States? How do 9/11 and the War on Terror still determine the reactions of nation-states to the pandemic and are these reactions reducible to a generalized state of exception? And, finally, is 2020 the beginning of a new historical time?

Видео States of Violence. Race, Capital and Sovereignty in the COVID-19 Era канала IRCPL