The Culling

Pandemic, Gerocide, Generational Affect

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2289019
AutoresL Cohen (0000-0002-0112-8642, Departments of Anthropology and of South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California Berkeley, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen34
Número4
Páginas542-560
Fecha de publicación2020-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaMedical Anthropology Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0745-5194 • E-ISSN: 1548-1387
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/maq.12627
PMID33274529
OpenAlexW3110461229
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas17
Referencias citadas39

Old age has been central to public health rationalities and contestations of the 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic. This article thinks through what age is and does in pandemic times by juxtaposing four domains of ethical publicity in which age comes to matter: (1) mass fatality of old persons under conditions of variable unpreparedness; (2) circulation of social-Darwinist argument for herd immunity through culling of the weak; (3) everyday challenges of late life care as these are amplified under quarantine; and (4) long-term conditions of economic and political impasse and environmental collapse, experienced as failure of older generations and abandonment of younger ones, a situation here termed generational affect. It asks to what extent the figure of the cullable old renders racialized disparities natural and makes sense through a generational affect in which the world feels as if the survival of the young is in question

Affect · Affect (linguistics · Argument (complex analysis · Biology · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Culling · Disease · Pandemic · Political science · Politics · Publicity · Sociology · Aging and Gerontology Research · Law · Medicine