The coronavirus lockdown in the UK has lead the government to increasingly focus on the affective life of the populace. This draws our attention to sovereign encounters, racialised public order and the temper of the populace more generally.
ILLAN RUA WALL, UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
ISRF Early Career Fellow 2016-17
Main image:
La rue, le soir (1936) by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1909 – 1992), Creative Commons
The coronavirus lockdown in the UK has lead the government to increasingly focus on the affective life of the populace. We can think about this on two different levels, on a micro level the police institute a new form of public order, which extends the category of suspect population to a much wider category. On the macro level the government seeks to manage the morale of the populace, trying to prevent ‘panic’. The coronavirus crisis draws our attention to sovereign encounters, racialised public order and the temper of the populace more generally. In this video presentation, commissioned by International IDEA, former ISRF Early Career Fellow Illan rua Wall reflects on these themes.
See also: Surveillance Capitalism in the Time of Covid-19
Dr Illan rua Wall
Reader in the School of Law, University of Warwick
Illan has published on critical legal theory, affective dynamics of policing, theories of constituent power, the Arab Spring, protest and transitional justice in Colombia, theories of human rights and revolt, and new Andean constitutional apparatuses. He is currently writing a book entitled ‘Law & Disorder’.
