Thinking the delirious pandemic governance by numbers with Samit Basu'sChosen Spiritsand Prayaag Akbar'sLeila

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2179554
AutoresTereza Kuldova (0000-0002-7810-7233)
Año2022
Volumen58
Número2
Páginas167-182
Fecha de publicación2022-03-04
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2022.2040801
OpenAlexW4221103311
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas34

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technocratic near-real-time data-driven governance, in that new rules, measures, and prohibitions have been introduced and revoked in response to predictive statistical and epidemiological models, graphs, charts, and aesthetically powerful data visualizations. Pandemic governance has enforced an extreme governance by numbers. The real has come to mirror the structure of dystopian fiction. In his analysis of governance by numbers, Alain Supiot shows how this form of governance ushers in a return of ties of allegiance and the re-emergence of feudalism in new guises. While the rise of technocratic autocracy and security regimes has been remarked upon, the simultaneous return of bonds of allegiance has been to a large degree overlooked. And yet it appears in recent postcolonial dystopian literature from India, Samit Basu’s Chosen Spirits and Prayaag Akbar’s Leila, which this article reads as illuminating the extreme endpoint of this delirious governance

Allegiance · Autocracy · Corporate governance · Democracy · Dystopia · Economics · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Sociology · Technocracy · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction · Finance · Law