ABSTRACT
This chapter advances the proposition that the COVID-19 pandemic is a politically made disaster. Against this proposition, the debate focuses on the extent the spread of COVID-19 may be linked to governments’ neglect of human rights-based global responsibilities. Considering that health narratives in the context of disease control entail a risk of authoritarian abuse, this chapter problematizes the increasing rise of nationalism. The debate draws on the ideology critique of the early Frankfurt School. Subsequently, the chapter analyses whether national and global pandemic management increases authoritarianism in societies and also analyses how far this may lead to a new form of national and global political ideology. This is put within a context of a postcolonial perspective denoted as necropolitical populism. Taking a dialectical perspective, it is proposed the COVID-19 crisis could provide an opportunity for global political and societal learning processes. Finally, the conditions under which the COVID-19 pandemic could reopen spheres of utopian imagination of global transformation in a post-pandemic world order are examined. Against this background, the chapter refers to contemporary utopian-theoretical debates in the (queer-)feminist context. It questions whether ideological interpellations can be subverted by dystopian storytelling and performances.
