Introduction: Liminal politics in the new age of disease: Technocratic mimetism

Measures against the disease are still visibly in place and affect people’s lives in all sorts of manner. In this Introduction, we concentrate how to identify the pandemic as a world transforming event. For most of the world’s population, Covid inaugurated a ‘state of exception’ in which the emergency measures introduced to counter the spread of disease led to the suspension of both individual rights and civil liberties which were previously taken for granted, and ordinary forms of political decision-making and democratic accountability. The global scale and simultaneity with which almost any limits on technocratic interventions were pushed aside in the name of ‘public health’ is unprecedented. Yet, the impact of the pandemic went beyond this suspension of legal and political norms; it involved also the suspension of everyday life and social relationships, as schools closed, people switched to working from home, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues were shuttered, public and even private gatherings prohibited, and masks and social distancing became a way of life. Even after lockdown restrictions were eased or ceased in many countries, other measures such as home-working, mask-wearing, and social distancing continued or were periodically re-imposed.