
Angela Mitropoulos is a theorist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. Among other writings which track shifting boundaries and movements in the history of philosophy, science, aesthetics, politics and economics, she is the author of Contract and Contagion: From Biopolitics to Oikonomia (2012).
VAGABONDS 001
Pandemonium
The Proliferating Borders of Capital and the Pandemic Swerve
Angela Mitropoulos
July 2020
From the origins of the crisis at the crossroads of fossil-fueled pollution and the privatisation of healthcare in China, Mitropoulos follows the virus’ spread as governments embraced reckless strategies of ‘containment’ and ‘herd immunity.’ Exoticist explanations of the pandemic and the recourse to quarantines and travel bans racialised the disease, while the reluctance to expand healthcare capacity displaced the risk onto private households and private wealth.
Table of Contents
4. Bodies In Motion
Endorsements
This extraordinary work offers urgent analysis of the pandemic’s politics of life and death, anchored in the longer histories and wider politics of bodies and borders, economy and infrastructure, and contagion. The abundant insight Mitropoulos offers readers is a precious gift.
An invaluable guide through the excessive noise of overlapping crises. Read this if, like so many of us, you need to pause and take in a broader sweep of thought, of history, and of ways of understanding as we all try to survive yet another deadly plague.
Deborah Cowen
Professor of Geography, University of Toronto and author of The Deadly Life of Logistics
Gargi Bhattacharayya
Professor of Sociology, University of East London and author of Rethinking Racial Capitalism