On the Forms of Vulnerability and Ungrievability in the Pandemic

Abstract
This contribution reviews and comments on recent scholarship on the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on how vulnerability was constructed and studied. We reflect on the various meanings of vulnerability and suggest political science should go beyond individualized and identity-based approaches and see the pandemic conditions as shared and embedded within the already existing social, political, and economic structures. We also examine how our previously identified discursive frames of science and security work in the context of the later pandemic stages and the vaccination rollout and note how these frames continue to render certain lives ungrievable. Our contribution is intended to add to the growing interest in using the concepts of vulnerability, precariousness, and precarity in studies of politics and international relations, as well as in critical studies of public health and the coronavirus pandemic.
Keywords
COVID-19, vulnerability, precarity, grievability, pandemic politics
Author Biography
Pavol Hardoš
Pavol Hardoš (1982) is an assistant professor at the Institute of European Studies and International Relations, the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava. He obtained his PhD in political theory at the Central European University in Budapest. With teaching commitments and interests in political philosophy, democratic theory, and theories of social science, his research focuses on the intersections of the epistemic aspects of politics, ideological discourse, and populism.
Zuzana Maďarová
Zuzana Maďarová (1984) is a researcher at the Institute of European Studies and International Relations, the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava. Her research focuses on the gender aspects of political subjectivity, feminist approaches in political sciences, gender perspectives in political communication, and the neo-conservative turn in political discourse.