© 2020 Tatiana KUKSA
2020 – №1 (19)
Citation link:
Kuksa, T. L. (2020). Biopoliticheskie reshenija i pravozashhitnyj aktivizm v period rasprostranenija COVID-2019 v Rossii: ogranichenija subjektnosti i novye granicy vzaimozavisimosti [Biopolitical Decisions and Human Rights Activism during Spread of COVID-19 in Russia: Subjectivity Limitations and New Limits of Interdependency]. Medicinskaja antropologija i biojetika [Medical Anthropology and Bioethics], 1 (19).
About the author:
Kuksa Tatyana Leonidovna is a post-graduate student at the Center of Medical Anthropology, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow).
Keywords: political decision-making, health-related decision-making, mobilization of law, limitation of civil rights, limitation of individual right of movement, presumption of innocence, order (resolution) of public health physician, medicalization of the everyday, medical monitoring, isolation, self-isolation, informed voluntary agreement to medical intervention, refusal of medical intervention, patient’s rights, digital license, digital control/monitoring, infodemic, COVID-19, threat of coronavirus spread (2019-nCoV), state of high alert, introduction and cancellation of restrictive policy (quarantine)
Abstract. To prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection (2019-nCoV), Russian authorities have taken biopolitical decisions of temporary and permanent nature. New prohibitions and emergency antiviral measures that limit habitual statuses and rights were introduced. Antiviral prohibitions and administrative-legal states introduced de jure affirmed the new volume of rights and duties or, in other words, a new subjectivity of ordinary people. Emergency measures and prohibitions that were taken de facto have organized a new medicalized reality and a new limit for interactions with significant “others”, which caused outrage, disobedience, and resistance of legally competent activists, as well as people in human rights and professional communities. In the article, I present display prohibitions and decisions taken by power-holding actors to prevent the spread of COVID-19, as well as the reactions of activists from (small) human rights groups advocating an indefinite circle of citizens, patients, and health care workers. In this work, I expose the human rights discourse, as well as controversies, methods, and (legal) mechanisms of resisting the new subjectivity, the new medicalized reality, and the biopolitical decisions preventing the spread of COVID-19 via penalties, digital control, and digital licenses.