Abstract

NUMAN CABALLERO MERLO, Javier. Citizenship in Paraguay does not exist: the pandemic as a display of bio power. Rev. Int. Investig. Cienc. Soc. [online]. 2021, vol.17, n.2, pp.257-278. ISSN 2226-4000.  https://doi.org/10.18004/riics.2021.diciembre.257.

The problem develops within the contemporary capitalism, with its history and social structures, with regards to the pandemic spread of COVID-19. Wanting to avoid the mirror of taking for granted what it is to be discussed, instead of channeling our professional behavior in the pandemic monologue, the objective of how bio politics takes advantage of this event using medical knowledge-power is proposed, to expand and deepen its effects of government as conduct of behavior, beyond its limits of what is strictly sanitary. Combining the display of strategies and devices from the bio and political anatomy, installing them under the skin and generating subjection and subjectivity through the psycho power of the subject, now subject to himself.

Entering in the issue of the defense and guarantees of liberties in plural, linking the concepts with the exercise of citizenship (restricted / broad) and the socio-civic empowerment, the access to education and culture, in the midst of an avalanche of restrictive policies that invade, infiltrate and corner fundamental rights, protection and social guarantees. These, as an expression of the freedoms achieved through historical conquests.

Themain findingsare that: according to the data and evolution of the pandemic, the restrictive policies are out of proportion, existing other types of strategies that are equally based on medical knowledge, but reputable and with a comprehensive approach; that the policies are asymmetrical regarding to their impact and effects according to the living conditions of the population under consideration; that it is not possible to develop a citizenship in its broad sense with the current indicators of civic participation and access to cultural capital; and, finally, that the hegemony of medical knowledge is not given as truth, but that the government uses it to give legitimacy to the application of various devices to develop the efficiency and effectiveness of bio politics.

Thus, for Zizek (2020), the pandemic constitutes an opportunity. On the one hand, by revealing the structural weaknesses and problems that the virus of capitalism implies without escape. Which, in the context of a health crisis, as an event, perhaps spreads another more beneficial virus, that of thinking of an alternative society, the construction of a global and cooperative society. This is a Kill Bill-style death-blow to the heart. Meanwhile, for Han (2020), with a systemic view, with concepts such as the fatigue and performance society shows that, far from collapsing the capitalism due to COVID-19, the bio power becomes more efficient and more effective with the development of psycho power Based on late modernity today in the incessant flow of data, of Big data as a foresight-shaping of behaviors that, as a mutation, overcomes and reinforces the strategies and devices of bio politics and political anatomy of the beginnings of modernity. Going from the surveillance and panoptic control over docile and useful bodies, to digital panoptism, where there is no other alternative but to cut off. In a perspective that I associate with the vision that the Korean sociologist Bong Joon-Ho has regarding to the contemporary society in its Parasite.

Keywords : Pandemic; Rights; Citizenship; Biopolitics; Psychopower.

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