Talk: Crisis and politicisation. The example of the Covid-19 pandemic

Talk by Amelie Kutter at the JURE workshop ‘Policitisations of pandemic recovery’, 16 June, 2023, University of Helsinki. Unlike during earlier crises, the distributive effects of crisis and crisis management have not been subject of political constestation during the pandemic. What has primarily been contested is the legitimacy of national biopolitics, that is, the way by which public authorities seek to control for the health of a population in a given territory. The paper argues that the emphasis on self-determination vis-à-vis state authorities and the backgrounding of distributive effects of crisis management is related to the way the pandemic was constructed as a crisis in the first place and the specific type of political subjectivity – the responsible and resilient subject – that containment and recovery measures interpellated. This argument is drawn from discursive political studies, and a discourse conception of politicisation more specifically, which highlights the construction of political agency, opponency and voice previously unaccounted for in political competition (Kutter 2020).