# Global Political Logics and Mainstream Discourses on Illness in the Declarations of the State of Exception in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Case of the USA, France, and Spain

## TL;DR

This paper analyzes how pandemic emergency declarations in the USA, France, and Spain reflect political and illness discourses that frame threats as 'other' and promote self-protection.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a novel analysis of pandemic declarations as expressions of global political and illness logics rooted in Western epistemology.

## Key findings

- Pandemic declarations reflect an autoimmune logic of democracy that attacks itself to protect itself.
- Illness is framed as an external threat requiring the self to triumph over the 'other'.
- These declarations promote a dangerous dialectic between self and other in global human relationships.

## Abstract

At the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, several countries declared “states of exception,” that is, authorized legal devices that, in the face of circumstances deemed catastrophic, permit the implementation of extraordinary measures and the temporary suspension of some rights in order to restore the previous state of affairs as soon as possible. This paper offers a comparative textual analysis of the different states of exception declared in the USA, France, and Spain. I argue that these texts constitute a privileged site to explore how prevalent global political logics and mainstream discourses on illness are interwoven. Regarding the global political logics in play, I hold that these declarations constitute an instantiation of democracy’s autoimmune character; it attacks itself in order to protect itself. Regarding mainstream discourses on illness, I explore how illness is regarded as a threat to one’s self (by something seemingly other) and the notion that therapy must consist of securing the self’s triumph over anything seemingly other. This twofold analysis reveals that an aporetic dialectic between self and other—as regards politics and illness—operates in these declarations, most likely because it is, in fact, one and the same dialectic, upon which Western epistemology rests. Furthermore, I suggest that these texts reflect and promote these dominant logics, contributing to shape human relationships around the globe in a certain dangerous way.