ABSTRACT
Why is the coronavirus pandemic a crisis — and not a catastrophe? And why is it a security crisis — and not a public health one? How is this crisis coupled with an economic one? And how do the twin crises implicate the state? These questions are confronted through a strategic-relational approach to the state. The management of the pandemic and its consequences poses a fundamental problem for the capitalist state: as state it is, above all, concerned with security; as capitalist, it is above all concerned with capital accumulation. Security and accumulation are informed by opposing logics (fear/hope, openness/closure, reduction/growth), and make contradictory demands on policy. As the pandemic causes simultaneous crises in both these fields, managing the crisis in one generates crisis in the other: managing the biosecurity crisis generates a severe economic crisis; and managing the latter exacerbates the former. Thus, policy is torn apart, and the state suffers strategic confusion: the twin crises combine into a crisis of the state.
