The COVID-19 pandemic was the definite point to understand an anaesthetic moment (or social numbness), an effect of neoliberalism and neoliberal polity (NNP). The COVID-19 pandemic compels us to reread the NNP to comprehend its consequences beyond the economic sphere. The arrival of an anaesthetic moment was a painful experience wherein social numbness towards marginalised sections was ubiquitous. The challenge and negotiation during the pandemic had quadrupled due to the construal of social pain as normalisation, violence as the new normal, deaths qua number, vulnerability as negative paternalisation and fait accompli, and absenting the role of critique.
AgambenG. (2020, February26). The state of exception provoked by an unmotivated emergency. Positions Politics. https://positionspolitics.org/giorgio-agamben-the-state-of-exception-provoked-by-an-unmotivated-emergency/
2.
BrownW. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. Zone Books.
ButlerJ. (2021, 21April). Judith Butler: Creating an Inhabitable World for Humans Means Dismantling Rigid Forms of Individuality. TIME. https://time.com/5953396/judith-butler-safe-world-individuality/
5.
CollinsV. E., & RotheD. L. (2020). The violence of neoliberalism: Crime, harm and inequality. Routledge.
6.
DworkinG. (1997). Paternalism. In DworkinG. (Ed.), Mill’s on liberty: Critical essays (pp. 61–82). Rowman & Littlefield.
7.
FoucaultM. (2007). What is critique? In LotringerS. (Ed.), The politics of truth: Michel Foucault (pp. 41–82). Semiotext(e).
8.
GhoshA. (2020). Making it count: Statistics and statecraft in the early People’s Republic of China. Princeton University Press.
9.
HarveyD. (2020, 19March). Anti-capitalist politics in the time of COVID-19. http://davidharvey.org/2020/03/anti-capitalist-politics-in-the-time-of-covid-19/
10.
HeldD. (1990). Introduction to critical theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Polity Press.
