COVID-19 in my morbid territorial body in a globalized, mutant, and active viral geography

Abstract

I emphasize that this essay has a personal character and, therefore, seeks to describe a state of morbid hospital life experienced by me for fifteen days under the affliction of COVID-19, from March 29, 2020, to May 13 of the same year. At the same time, I aim to make a link with possible and pertinent connections between Geography and other related humanities areas. Thus, I highlight that two common variants intertwine: the zoé of the Greeks, my natural reproductive life, along with my biopolitics, a form of politically qualified life (Agamben, 2004, p.16). Or, as Raffestan (1993) asserts, a zoé as energy socially worked into information, with active and passive knowledge, manipulated by asymmetrical capitalist power systems, under the wrath of an eternally exploitative capital; in my case, a biopolitical body, why not say, now under the aegis of necropolitics, in all quadrants of life, increasingly precarious. I know the endeavor is challenging, but not as much as overcoming, as I did, the two variants of my being: my naked body susceptible to COVID-19, as well as my biopolitics in strong confrontation with necropolitics fostering the emergence and resurgence of bacterial and viral biomes, like that of the mentioned virus, and, dialectically, the search for science in its combat. Thus, I emphasize, I will speak in the first person, as well as "scientifically," when appropriate, in the third person. This article is part of the cycle of virtual debates of the IV CONGEO, with the central theme: "Challenges and new debates in Contemporary Political Geography in Brazil," with me, Prof. Alcindo José de Sá, and Prof. Tânia Bacelar de Araújo, having Prof. Caio Augusto Maciel as moderator, seeking to focus, through various paths, on the changing but necessary role of the Brazilian Nation-State and its Federated States in public health management and in combating the COVID-19 epidemic.