Biopolitics and (in)security in Foucault: elements for a diagnosis of the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

Abstract

Faced with the criticism of the biopolitical control exercised in the COVID-19 pandemic, we defend the importance of a re-examination of the foucauldian reflections so that the critical diagnoses of the present is accompanied by a careful analysis of the fields of force and knowledges in which such controls occur. Bearing in mind the correlation between security mechanisms and the management of insecurities, we argue that in the management of the pandemic by the brazilian executive government, the excesses of power took place more due to the lack of imposing restrictive health measures and obstacles to the control of contagion than through restrictive actions of classical individual freedoms.

Keywords

• foucault. biopolitics. mechanisms of security. pandemics. brazilian government.