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Necropower, Death and Digital Communication in Covid-19 Capitalism

Christian Fuchs (Paderborn University, Germany)

Digital Humanism

ISBN: 978-1-80382-422-2, eISBN: 978-1-80382-419-2

Publication date: 19 September 2022

Abstract

This chapter is a reflection on the digital mediation of death and dying in the COVID-19 pandemic from a critical political economy perspective. It asks: What is the role of the communication of death and dying in capitalist society? How has communication with dying loved ones changed in the COVID-19 pandemic? What roles have digital technologies and capitalism played in this context?

Building on foundational theoretical insights into the role of death and dying in capitalism, this essay presents some empirical studies of death and dying in society and the COVID-19 pandemic and interprets their findings from a Communication Studies perspective.

In capitalist societies, death and dying are taboo topics and are hidden, invisible and institutionalised. The COVID-19 pandemic had contradictory effects on the role of death in society. It is a human, cultural and societal universal that humans want to die in company with loved ones. The presented empirical studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. The wish to die in a social manner derives from humans' social and communicative nature. In capitalism, the reality of dying diverges from the ideal of dying. Capitalism hides, individualises, makes invisible and institutionalises death and dying.

The analysed studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. Building and going beyond the works of the political theorist and philosopher Achille Mbembe and the philosopher and sociologist Erich Fromm, the essay introduces the notion of capitalist necropower. It is shown how the COVID-19 pandemic in many cases destroyed the social and communicative nature of human beings and how capitalist necropower created unnecessary surplus deaths and formed the context of the digital mediation of communication with dying loved ones in the pandemic.

Keywords

Citation

Fuchs, C. (2022), "Necropower, Death and Digital Communication in Covid-19 Capitalism", Digital Humanism (Society Now), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 173-214. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80382-419-220221007

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022 Christian Fuchs. Published under exclusive license by Emerald Publishing Limited