Coronavirus, Epidemiology, and the Myth of the Primacy of Will over Matter (original) (raw)

Depictions, journal of the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, 2021

Abstract

The coronavirus outbreak is an intensification of a pre-existing state of emergency in the West. That condition has become possible through the cultural reception of social science data as evidence that the human will takes precedence over material conditions in shaping history. Epidemiology has been particularly instrumental in contributing to the sense that prudence—behavioral propriety—is the main hedge against death. The state of emergency reanimates death not as a normal part of life but as an offense; failing to follow the prescriptions said to allow death to be avoided implicates the individual in the preoccupying crisis, be it coronavirus, the earlier crises of AIDS and obesity, or the inevitable next one.

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