ABSTRACT
Drawing from the insights that the analysis of biosecurity and economic policy offer, the third part of the book addresses the question of the state-form that emerges from the pandemic. Inserting the analysis of the state's response to the twin crises into a framework defined by political theory, jurisprudence and state theory, it outlines the main contours of the state to come: its logic, power, institutionality and its relation to society.
A shift is occurring in the “logic” of the state, i.e. in the state's deep-set perception of the world and its role in it that inform state structure and power. Biopolitics is the defining logic of the liberal state; indeed, the biopolitical character of state power was pronounced throughout the pandemic. Biopolitics is, moreover, a capitalist logic; it is essentially a management of labour power, and its final end is capital accumulation. The capitalist character of biopolitics informed the management of the twin crises and was epitomised in the treatment of care homes. Being biopolitical, biosecurity applies to the body, which it treats as a life-unit, as metabolism and as labour force; and it also defaces and abstracts into commodified data. Crucially, the pandemic experience denotes a shift in state logic as biopolitics mutates into threat governmentality. The latter no longer conceptualises life and society as inherently creative, but as inherently destructive. Accordingly, it does not seek to manage it into productivity, but to extinguish the threat it embodies.
