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lockdown discourse in reopening core countries is a thinly veiled ideological playground for updated colonial fantasies
the generic universalism (they can happen anywhere, constant potential for reversal of core and periphery) & a virus as the inciting incident all draw ofc on the sci-fi revision of 19th century colonial tropes
but this time around there’s a definite gamer quality - liberals, a drop-down menu of ‘world building’ policy options, for the libertarians, a first person shooter - so many ways to vicariously enjoy any given geospatial target
i would guess the white collar american situation of federal breakdown, soft restrictions in most places, & months in a remote work cocoon feeds the imagination of lockdown as a realm of possibility, harder to enjoy if worried about getting shot after curfew
lockdown fantasies are almost exclusively about social control and/or extermination, but the full-spectrum terror of the pandemic, supported by 'science' and displaceable onto 'vulnerable populations,' shields against charges of racism or classism
as cracks in the lockdown consensus deepen & it becomes more threat than reality for core countries, its function is clearer: terroristic punishment & humiliation, sublimating a massive, global concentration of wealth into nationalist displays of governability
i.e., if 'saving lives' was taken seriously, the UK-US-led shaming of sweden for subordinating lockdown to liberal principles would seem obscene, since most of all three countries' high death rates resulted from the same 'oversight': letting nursing home residents die en masse
since lockdown won institutional & popular consent in the core without a uniform definition or evidentiary standards, it can go on to serve as a 'limit point' of what can be inflicted on any society, anywhere, while also limiting solidarity with those suffering worse lockdowns
the crisis has expanded the social imagination, rejecting worn neoliberal slogans like 'society does not exist' or 'there is no alternative,' but among its conditions of possibility are: total surveillance, and a universal capacity to impose absolute social discipline as needed
lockdown galvanizes the colonial imagination, but untethered to any one nation-state, the inherent supremacy of 'the west,' or liberal frameworks for regulating competing interests - rather, humanity is imagined as a settler-colonial species on a hostile planet
colonial fantasies, from early modern utopias to pessimistic late victorian fiction, are often ambivalent abt the brutal hierarchies they depict, all that seems new to me abt now is the lack of separation btw metropole & colony - the fantasy is rooted in enclosure not travel
