The new coronavirus is changing the way in which we think about the human body. It was converted into a weapon, says Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe. After all, in exiting our homes we might contract the virus or transmit it to others. “Now we all have the power to kill… isolation is just one form of regulating this power,” says Mbembe.
Mbembe coined the term “necropolitics” in 2003. In his work, Mbembe investigates the form in which governments decide who will live and who will die, and also how they will live and die.
Necropolitics also appears in the fact that the virus does not affect everyone equally. There ∃a debate concerning prioritizing treatment for the youth and allowing the elderly to die. There is the idea that the economy cannot be stopped even if it means that some of the population must die in order to guarantee productivity. “The capitalist system is based on the unequal distribution of the opportunity to live and die… This system has always functioned with the idea that some are more valuable than others,” explains Mbembe.
Internet: https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu (adapted).
Considering the ideas stated in the previous text and the words used in it, judge the following item
From Mbembe’s ideias, one can correct infer that, as with other aspects of society, life and death are also determined in terms of political and economic power.
