Author: Simon Elmer

Better take off your medical mask, put it on your head and call it a thinking cap, because today I want to talk about the Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. Why? You ask. Two reasons. The first is because, since the coronavirus crisis began, Agamben, who lives in Italy, has been writing commentaries and reflections that … Continue reading Giorgio Agamben and the Biopolitics of COVID-19

The following are the daily entries in my diary since 9 April, and follow on from the four articles I have published on the coronavirus crisis, COVID-19 and Capitalism, Sociology of a Disease, Language is a Virus, and Coronazombies! The conflicting information about the virus and the disease it can cause is spreading so rapidly that this seemed … Continue reading Good Morning, Coronazombies! Diary of a Bio-Political Crisis Event

On 25 March, Architects for Social Housing was approached to respond to some questions from WIRED magazine about ‘how substandard home design will make this period of self-isolation worse for many people in the UK’. The resulting article, by Sophie Charara, was published as Our terrible housing stock is making lockdown life even worse; but … Continue reading Coronavirus, Government Lockdown and its effects on UK Housing

It’s a curious fact that, in every disaster movie that comes out of Hollywood, whatever threatens Western Civilisation, Humankind or Planet Earth typically starts with the United States of America, usually New York, but sometimes Los Angeles. Whether it’s alien invaders, nuclear war, the rise of artificial intelligence, terrorist attacks, a tsunami wave, an earth-bound … Continue reading Coronazombies! Infection and Denial in the United Kingdom

This is the third in the series of articles I’m writing about what has become known as the coronavirus pandemic. In the first, COVID-19 and Capitalism, I argued that the UK Government’s decision to send workers home without pay while compensating businesses for lost revenue with vast sums of public money was capitalism attempting to recoup … Continue reading Language is a Virus: SARs-CoV-2 and the Science of Political Control

1. Who is dying in Italy? Italy is now by far and away the country worse affected by the coronavirus, with 69,176 confirmed cases of infection and 6,820 deaths, the latter figure more than double the whole of China, with only 8,326 people recovered, and 3,393 currently in a serious or critical condition. As of … Continue reading Sociology of a Disease: Age, Class and Mortality in the Coronavirus Pandemic

‘Depressions are when the monopolies see their profits increased, and when they consolidate their economic empire, absorbing all the small ones, all the sardines in this ocean of economic struggle.’ — Ernesto Guevara 1. Capitalising on the Coronavirus Crisis Capitalism, in basic terms, means that capital is more valuable to a society than the workers … Continue reading COVID-19 and Capitalism