BIOPOLITICAL SOLUTIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISM DURING THE SPREAD OF COVID-2019 IN RUSSIA: LIMITATIONS OF SUBJECTIVITY AND NEW BORDERS OF INTERDEPENDENCE

DOI: http://doi.org/10.33876/2224-9680/2020-1-19/04

Abstract

To prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection (2019-nCoV), Russian authorities have taken biopolitical decisions of temporary and permanent nature. New prohibitions and emergency antiviral measures that limit habitual statuses and rights were introduced. Antiviral prohibitions and administrative-legal states introduced de jure affirmed the new volume of rights and duties or, in other words,  a new subjectivity of ordinary people. Emergency measures and prohibitions that were taken de facto have organized a new medicalized reality and a new limit for interactions with significant “others”, which caused outrage, disobedience, and resistance of legally competent activists, as well as people in human rights and professional communities. In the article, I present display prohibitions and decisions taken by power-holding actors to prevent the spread of COVID-19, as well as the reactions of activists from (small) human rights groups advocating an indefinite circle of citizens, patients, and health care workers. In this work, I expose the human rights discourse, as well as controversies, methods, and (legal) mechanisms of resisting the new subjectivity, the new medicalized reality, and the biopolitical decisions preventing the spread of COVID-19 via penalties, digital control, and digital licenses.

Citation link:

Kuksa, T. L. (2020). Biopoliticheskie reshenija i pravozashhitnyj aktivizm v period rasprostranenija COVID-2019 v Rossii: ogranichenija subjektnosti i novye granicy vzaimozavisimosti [Biopolitical Decisions and Human Rights Activism during Spread of COVID-19 in Russia: Subjectivity Limitations and New Limits of Interdependency]. Medicinskaja antropologija i biojetika [Medical Anthropology and Bioethics], 1 (19).

References

• Arkhipova, A.S., Kirzyuk, A.A. (2019) Opasnye sovetskie veshchi: gorodskie legendy i strakhi v SSSR [Dangerous Soviet things: urban legends and fears in the USSR], Moscow: NLO.
• Biehl, J. (2013) The judicialization of biopolitics: Claiming the right to pharmaceuticals in Brazilian courts, American ethnologist, 40(3), pp. 419–436.
• Birchall, С. (2006) Knowledge goes pop: from conspiracy theory to gossip. Oxford, N.Y.: Berg.
• Black, D. (1973) The Mobilization of Law. Journal of Legal Studies. 2, pp. 125–149.
• Black, D. (2010) The Behavior of Law, Bingley: Emerald.
• Chaplinsky, A.V. (2012) Analiz mekhanizmov pravovogo regulirovaniya predprinimatel'skoi deyatel'nosti v Rossii [Analysis of the mechanisms of legal regulation of commercial activity in Russia], Institute of State and Municipal Management of the Higher School of Economics, Moscow: HSE Publishing House.
• Dandes, A. (2003) Fol'klor: semiotika i/ili psikhoanaliz [Folklore: semiotics and / or psychoanalysis], Moscow: Vostochnaya literatura.
• Halliwell, M. (2017) Voices of Mental Health: Medicine, Politics, and American Culture, 1970-2000, Rutgers University Press.
• Ignat'ev, M. (2019) Prava cheloveka kak politika i kak idolopoklonstvo [Human rights as a politician and as idolatry], Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
• Kuksa, T.L. (2011) Rol' i mesto protsedur dosudebnogo obzhalovaniya v kontrole za sferoi gosudarstvennogo upravleniya, ili perspektivnye napravleniya administrativnoi i sudebnoi reform [The role and place of pre-trial appeal procedures in the control of public administration, or promising areas of administrative and judicial reform]. Voprosy gosudarstvennogo i munitsipal'nogo upravleniya [Issues of state and municipal government], 1, pp. 81–97.
• Latour, B. (2004) Scientific objects and legal objectivity, Law, anthropology, and the constitution of the social: making persons and things, Cambridge University Press, pp. 73–114.
• Olson, M. (1965) Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Harvard University Press.
• Paneyakh, E.L. (2011) Traektoriya ugolovnogo dela i obvinitel'nyi uklon v rossiiskom sude [The trajectory of the criminal case and the indictment in a Russian court]. Pravo i pravoprimenenie v Rossii: mezhdistsiplinarnye issledovaniya. Pod red. V.V. Volkova. [Law and enforcement in Russia: interdisciplinary research] (Ed. V.V. Volkova), Moscow: Statut, pp. 150–177.
• Paneyakh, E.L., Titaev, K.D., Volkov, V.V., Primakov, D. (2010) Obvinitel'nyi uklon v ugolovnom protsesse: faktor prokurora [The accusatory bias in the criminal process: the factor of the prosecutor], St. Petersburg: EU St. Petersburg.
• Parker, R. (2012) Critical Intersections and Engagements: Gender, Sexuality, Health, and Rights, Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Histories, Activisms, and Futures, Marcia C. Inhorn and Emily A. Wentzell (eds.), London: Duke University Press, pp. 206–238.
• Quaranta, I. (2012) From the communication of information to the production of meaning as a strategy for promoting the right to health, RECIIS, 6(2), pp. 1–15.
• Quaranta, I., Minelli, M., Fortin, S. (2018) Assemblages, Transformations, and the Politics of Care,  Bologna: Bologna University Press.
• Rose, N. (2007) The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Scott, J.С. (1985) Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Scott, J.C. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
• Tamanakha, B. (2014) Ponimanie pravovogo plyuralizma: ot proshlogo k nastoyashchemu, ot lokal'nogo k global'nomu [Understanding legal pluralism: from the past to the present, from local to global], Pravo i pravoprimenenie v zerkale sotsial'nykh nauk: khrestomatiya sovremennykh tekstov [Law and enforcement in the mirror of social sciences: a reader of modern texts], Ed.by  E.L. Paneyah, Moscow: Statut, pp. 145–183.
• Vakhshtain, V.S. (2020) Pandemiya, strakh, solidarnost' [Pandemic, fear, solidarity], Rossiya v global'noi politike [Russia in global politics], Vol.18, №3(103).
• Yukalo, V. and M. (2020) Right to Health under the Pandemic Conditions: Individual-State Cooperation and Interconnectedness, Postmodern Openings/Deschideri Postmoderne. Supplement,  11, pp. 177–187.
• Zhulin, A.B., Klimenko, A.V., Kuksa, T.L., Knutov, A.V., Khanova, E.P., Kuksa, T.L. (2010) Napravleniya dal'neishego razvitiya tekhnicheskogo regulirovaniya i gosudarstvennogo kontrolya ispolneniya obyazatel'nykh trebovanii po bezopasnosti produktsii i protsessov [Directions for the further development of technical regulation and state control of the implementation of mandatory requirements for product and process safety], Voprosy gosudarstvennogo i munitsipal'nogo upravleniya [Issues of state and municipal government], 2, pp. 40–55.