Fourteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

States are reconfiguring the social contract from guaranteeing freedom and security to governance without guarantees. The pandemic and the highly contagious nature of the Novel Coronavirus have created a new pitch for life without guarantees; and life under a constant source of threat which we have to reconcile and live with. We are witnessing the possibility of a surveillance state which does not guarantee security to life or liberty, for the “right to life” can not be assured in a world where even more frequent pandemic outbreaks are expected, coupled with the devastating consequences of irreversible climate change. The difference between the natural and social worlds is collapsing. As ecological changes and pandemics make everybody vulnerable—irrespective of caste, social status, class and gender—social hierarchies will seem irrelevant and therefore inequalities will appear to be more of a given; as “natural” as pandemics.Such an emergent politics is captured by a new category of resilience described by Brad Evans and Julian Reid in their 2014 book, Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously. Resilience, the authors say, is not about overcoming or resolving a crisis but about the ways and means of coming to terms with it. So, the ongoing pandemic is preparing a new frame to look at civic crisis, economic emergency and political conflicts as “given” and permanent—things one has to live with rather than fight against. Evans argue that resilience teaches us to “live in a terrifying yet normal state of affairs that suspends us in petrified awe.”