In the following interview from 1981, Michel Foucault gives a brilliant and eloquent overview of his philosophical project.
Bruno Latour has written an article (first published in La Monde) which asks if the coronavirus could serve as a dress rehearsal for the crisis of climate change
It is as though the intervention of the virus could serve as a dress rehearsal for the next crisis, the one in which the reorientation of living conditions is going to be posed as a challenge to all of us, as will all the details of daily existence that we will have to learn to sort out carefully. I am advancing the hypothesis, as have many others, that the health crisis prepares, induces, incites us to prepare for climate change. This hypothesis still needs to be tested.
This is an interesting piece of news the The New York Times: “Burning Cell Towers, Out of Baseless Fear They Spread the Virus”. On the one hand, there indeed seemd to be a problem with disinformation about 5G as origin of the novel corona virus.
The current technocratic hype are “track and trace” apps to help contain the coronavirus. The example of South Korea is frequently given as success story. This success is debatable however and needs to be put in context. An article on nature.com gives more context on the surveillance of infected people in South Korea:
In de volgende video deelt filosofe Eva Meijer haar ideeën over de coronavirus pandemie.
The Nation published a great interview with Sheila Jasanoff by Nawal Arjini. Interetsing topics include the spread of information about the virus, the use of visualization for conveying statistical information, and the role/importance of social sciences in these times.
One aspect of this coronavirus pandemic is the spread of information. I therefore find this reflection by Erin McAweeney on “Who Benefits from Health Misinformation?” quite important:
Different groups with different motives are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic in different ways. I’m a senior analyst at Graphika, a social media network analysis firm, where we map “cyber-social terrain” and the information that flows through them. To date, we’ve found online communities from health topics, political groups, and social identity groups pushing misinformation on COVID-19: grifter televangelists, QAnon, MAGA Twitter, anti-vaxxers, conservative and anti-CCP politicians and billionaires, and anti-immigration parties in France and Italy. These groups frame and misrepresent the issue to fit their ideological goals.
I am currently watching the second part of the documentary series “In Europa”. This series focuses on news stories that did not gain so much attention, but could perhaps be seen as a sign of what was to come. With this in mind I find these news articles about China expelling American journalists as an example of such a news story of history in the making.
Kristina Jacobsen at Sapiens.org provides us with an anthropological perspective on music making and songs circulating coronavirus lockdown in Italy. Especially interesting is the new dynamic between the harder hit North of Italy versus the Southern regions.
Two interesting articles from The Fast Company:
One article about how a popular chart of the coronavirus and flattening the curve: “The story behind ‘flatten the curve,’ the defining chart of the coronavirus”