The Pandemic as Evidence of the Biopolitics of Institutionalized Old Age

Abstract

The emergence of the pandemic became a juncture of global scope and warlike levels: to the nations in conflict, another invisible enemy was added, a microorganism that has kept the entire planet on tenterhooks, the same one with which more than 182 million people around the world had been infected by 20 June 2021 and has claimed the lives of millions of human beings. During the first wave, the most aRected population was the elderly, especially those living in institutionalised residential settings - nursing homes, old people’s homes. The aim of this paper is to analyse how this pandemic has highlighted the fragility of long-term care institutions and their management of the health of the elderly, a fragility that is based on political decisions that show a valorisation of old life that can be approached from the perspective of biopolitics. What is a pandemic if not a state of exception on a global scale? What is a state of exception if not the space in which the exercise of sovereignty can be realised through the biopolitical devices embodied in institutions and in lives which, without being sacrifiable, can be put to death through legally legitimised decisions?