Liminal Politics in the New Age of Disease: Technocratic Mimetism [Paperback]

Liminal Politics in the New Age of Disease explores the phenomenon of liminal politics: an open-ended state of exception in which normal rules no longer apply, and things which were previously unimaginable become possible  even appearing remarkably quickly to represent a new normal. With attention to the emergency measures introduced to counter the spread of Covid-19, it shows how the emergency suspension of democratic accountability, ordinary life and civil liberties, while accidental, can lend itself to orchestration and exploitation for the purpose of political gain by trickster or parasitic figures. An examination of the cloning of political responses from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, with little consideration of their rational justification or local context, this volume interrogates the underlying dynamics of a global technological mimetism, as novel technocratic interventions are repeated and the way is opened for new technologies to reorganise social life in a manner that threatens the disintegration of its existing patterns. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, social theory and anthropological theory with interests in political expediency and the transformation of social life.

This book explores the phenomenon of liminal politics, considering the manner in which emergency measures introduced to counter the spread of Covid-19  and repeated from jurisdiction to jurisdiction  exemplify processes of technological mimetism, that reorganise social life in a manner that threatens its ordinary patterns.

Liminal Politics in the New Age of Disease is both a timely and enduring examination of how to understand the politics of disease where the normal rules of life no longer apply. From the transformation of our daily interaction with our fellow human beings to societal decisions of whether to close the economy and suspend electoral politics, the al“¡