Die Neuvermessung der politischen Landschaft. Störungen und Folge-Störungen der Pandemie

Health versus humanity? Three recent German novels on biopolitics and citizenship

“…Developments in the concept of solidarity provide a useful example of how during the COVID-19 crisis societal attitudes shifted and systems were restructured. Hannah Broecker (2023) analyses the new political constellations resulting from the concept of solidarity being instrumentalised during the COVID-19 crisis in Germany, structuring the political landscape into a hegemonic and an antihegemonic discourse. The term ‘solidarity’ goes back to Roman civil law and implies the idea of a group of people pursuing common interests and fostering their cohesion (cf.…”

“…This was extended to acceptance of the ‘vaccination’. ‘Solidarity’ now served to question the concept of individualisation of risks and responsibility, and ‘obtained the function to define and represent the discursive logic of the hegemonic discourse’ (Broecker, 2023: 163). This was then increasingly leveraged to exclude those who did not follow this hegemonic discourse: a divide opened up.…”

“…Ulrich Montgomery, the German president of the World Medical Association, coined the term ‘tyranny of the non-vaccinated’ (cf. Broecker, 2023: 164), inversing the logic and presenting those who refused to be coerced as perpetrators. From this perspective, it became possible to suspend constitutional rights such as the right to the freedom of movement (art.1), the freedom of assembly (art.8) or the right of physical integrity (art.2) and to brand critical voices against the hegemonic discourse as false and dangerous and consequently to exclude them from public media and platforms, thus also curtailing the right to the freedom of expression (art.…”

“…This position stresses that the measures drastically deepen existing differences, for example, the gap in wealth – also worldwide, since due to the measures hundreds of millions died of hunger, illness and poverty in the global South (cf. Broecker, 2023: 166–169). This point is also stressed by Kaltwasser (2023: 148–149).…”

Introduction: Re-presenting COVID-19: Biopolitics, digitalisation, citizenship

“…In this regard, his intervention was symptomatic of COVID-19 narratives in general, which too often appeared to confuse categories of political left and right for the sake of building new alliances of pro- or anti-pandemic measures (cf. Broecker, 2023).…”