A Research Futures webinar with Professor David Andress
Hosted by Professor David Andress
In times of crisis, the rule of law and democracy no longer go hand in hand. Faced with global threats, governments are increasingly derogating from common law. This time, it's the body that we discipline, that we confine. What Michel Foucault had brilliantly exposed is replayed again to satisfy a form of economic utility.
In reflecting upon the extraordinary times we are living in, this webinar, hosted by Professor David Andress, proposes to address the reaction of States and societies when bodies become dangerous in themselves, not as individual persons who could be held to account, but as physical carriers of contagion. It will also highlight the temptation to escalate emergency powers and the potential pressure from the general population to do so, which create a sort of existential dilemma for democracy, a narrow path to navigate between rejecting what is necessary for survival, and abandoning what is vital for empowered citizenship.