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Covid Disobedience and the Autoimmune Self-Destruction of Liberal Individualism
- Author(s):
- Christopher Griffin (see profile)
- Date:
- 2023
- Group(s):
- Political Philosophy & Theory
- Subject(s):
- COVID-19 (Disease)--Social aspects, COVID-19 (Disease)--Political aspects, Individualism, Neoliberalism, Derrida, Jacques, Autoimmunity, Political and social views, Privileges and immunities
- Item Type:
- Blog Post
- Tag(s):
- Political Philosophy, political theory, Poststructuralism, deconstruction, community, interdependence
- Permanent URL:
- https://doi.org/10.17613/24v4-6b45
- Abstract:
- In this short article, I discuss a form of civil disobedience that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic: the refusal to comply with lockdown rules. Because such rule-breakers often claim that they are acting to preserve freedom, I ask whether their unwillingness to help prevent the spread of the virus is symptomatic of neoliberal individualism. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's work on autoimmunity, I argue that Covid disobedience is ironically self-defeating, because in exacerbating the crisis the rule-breakers force governments to adopt increasingly draconian measures. Lockdown-refusers evidently believe that the protection of their individual rights is more important than the protection of vulnerable members of society, but this is an illusion. The self-sufficiency that they presuppose is a myth that sustains liberalism, and which has been debunked by the interdependency that the pandemic reveals.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Online publication
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 5 months ago
- License:
- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Share this:
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