Virus, wars and new heroes: the Covid-19 pandemic under the biomilitarism

ABSTRACT

I develop a comprehensive exercise on the most prominent social constructions around the Covid-19 pandemic, induced mainly by science. It is considered online journalistic content according to a perspective inspired by the ethnographic purpose of looking for meanings. War metaphors assume a hegemonic role as privileged semantic resources for conceptualizing the health crisis and what is done to deal with the emergency situation at various levels. These metaphors are expressed from the microphysical scale of characterization of the virus and its relationship with the human organism to the social scale of the infection epidemiology, socio-sanitary responses, geopolitical implications and identity expressions of different agents, especially professionals who operate in the spheres of science and health. Ironically, the pandemic that attracts so many tropes that refer to war and militarism has been constituted, simultaneously, as an induction field of tacit wars, giving rise to multiple political-ideological disputes and geopolitical tensions.

KEYWORDS :
Covid-19; responses to the pandemic; scientists and health professionals; war metaphors