Power and political nature: the case of Covid-19

Abstract

The article reflects on the political nature of man and his relationship with political power, in some of its different facets, placing it in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the health measures taken, and the subsequent return to the “new normal” to point out how, despite the attempts of objectified power to expand, human freedom always resurfaces, limiting the advances of political control. It is argued that human beings are inherently political, seeking to live in community and to develop fully in it. Based on Byung-Chul Han, José Antonio Marina and Michel Foucault, power is defined as the capacity to convert individual or collective projects into reality, while objectified power (a concept borrowed from Bertrand de Jouvenel, although he calls it Power) is presented as an autonomous entity that seeks to expand and perpetuate itself through the apparatus of government. The Foucauldian concept of biopower is introduced, as the capacity of power to control and regulate individual bodies and the population as a whole. It is discussed why objectified power relinquished total control over bodies during the pandemic, arguing that the political nature of man and resistance to extreme measures of control, along with negative economic repercussions and popular discontent, led it to retreat. He warns of the possibility that objectified power will seek to establish more subtle but equally effective forms of control in the future, taking advantage of the population’s lack of political awareness.