Introduction: Re-presenting COVID-19: Biopolitics, digitalisation, citizenship

Abstract

This introduction briefly traces the development of historical and philosophical responses to COVID-19 in its longue durée and considers the pandemic’s lasting biopolitical effects in contemporary digital culture and its implications for democratic mechanisms and citizenship in Europe. It is argued that the present juncture constitutes a crucial and propitious moment in European thought and culture to take general stock of COVID-19 and to re-present it within the evolution of both European society and the European imaginary. Furthermore, the collective experience of COVID-19 has engendered important new confluences between humanities and the social sciences. Cinema is offered as a case study of biopolitical practice, or ‘bioart’, produced during the pandemic, revealing how ideas of community and citizenship are being re-thought and re-conceptualised ethically and politically in terms of relationality that surpasses standard disciplinary and ideological borders. Finally, the introduction outlines the six chapters comprising the volume.