Orgad Shani, Hegde Radha Sarma
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
New York University, USA.
Int J Cult Stud. 2022 Jul;25(3-4):287-308. doi: 10.1177/13678779211066328.
National governments have played a key role in constructing the Covid-19 pandemic through their communications. Drawing on thematic, discursive and visual analyses of Covid-19 campaigns from 12 national contexts, we show how the pandemic has presented governments with unique conditions for articulating and reinforcing nationalism and neoliberalism. The campaigns frame the pandemic as a force that brings the nation together and conjure up notions of national 'solidarity lite' while relentlessly authorizing the crisis-ready responsible citizen. In so doing, they reproduce neoliberal rationality by shifting the locus of responsibility from the state and social structures to the individual and re-inscribing gendered and classed notions of responsibility, care and citizenship. Mobilizing national neoliberal narratives enables governments to render the pandemic legible as a crisis while obscuring both the structural injustices that exacerbate the crisis and the structural changes required to address it.
各国政府通过其宣传活动在构建新冠疫情方面发挥了关键作用。通过对来自12个国家背景的新冠疫情宣传活动进行主题、话语和视觉分析，我们展示了疫情如何为各国政府提供了独特条件，用以阐明和强化民族主义及新自由主义。这些宣传活动将疫情框定为一种能使国家团结起来的力量，唤起国家“轻度团结”的概念，同时不断授权塑造随时应对危机的有责任感的公民。这样一来，它们通过将责任 locus 从国家和社会结构转移到个人，并重新铭刻责任、关怀和公民身份的性别化和阶层化观念，从而再现了新自由主义理性。动员国家新自由主义叙事使各国政府能够将疫情呈现为一场危机，同时掩盖加剧危机的结构性不公正以及应对危机所需的结构性变革。 （注：原文中“locus of responsibility”直译为“责任场所”，这里意译为“责任归属”可能更通顺，但按要求未做调整）
