The promise of “normality” and the phantasm of “sovereignty”. Queer-feminist reflections on capitalism and politics in times of the covid-19-crisis

As feminist, queer, postcolonial, anticapitalist and critical race scholars highlight, capitalism succeeds to reproduce itself because it uses gendered, heteronormative, racialized, ability-centered structures of domination (that it produces) as technologies of crisis management. Antonio Gramsci has coined the term “hegemony” to describe the phenomenon that capitalism offers promises that lead people to consent to inequality, exploitation and domination. From a queer, feminist, postcolonial perspective it is crucial to expand Gramscis theory and highlight that hegemony is not only organized through material concessions but also through sexualized and racialized phantasies, promises of belonging and normality as well as through everyday heteronormative practices such as e.g. family live. The paper asks how such an intersectional Gramscian perspective helps to better understand capitalism and politics in the covid-19 crisis. The geopolitical focus is Austria. I argue that the corona-crisis is shaped by these two dynamics: that on one side structures of a racialized, androcentric, heteronormative, ability-centered capitalism have led to the fact that a health crisis could turn into a comprehensive social crisis accompanied by an increase in social inequality, violence and exclusion. At the other side, simultaneously, capitalist corona-politics employs heteronormative, Eurocentric, androcentric, ability-centered inequalities as technologies of crisis management. The paper focuses on three aspects: The first part discusses care. Here I argue that it is not just the neoliberalization of the health care system that needs to be blamed for the corona crisis as it is stated in many critical analyses. Rather, an androcentric, heteronormative and ability-centered logic inherent in capitalism is responsible for the current comprehensive social crisis. This logic denies and projects bodily needs and dependence onto those who have been othered: women*, queer people, people with disabilities, people of color. Even though, it is these androcentric, heteronormative, ability-centered logics that have caused the crisis, heteronormativity and familialism do not only serve as core strategies in the crisis management but also serve as technologies of hegemony: as promises of safety and belonging in times of a fundamental crisis. The second part focuses on capitalist biopolitics. In the Covid-19 pandemic the racist, nationalist, heteronormative and familialistic biopolitical dimension of capitalism has become apparent: Racism, nationalism, heteronormativity and androcentric understandings of “belonging”, “family” and “home” draw a demarcation line between those lives who should be protected, and those who are constructed as unworthy of protection: people in refugee camps, homeless people, illegalized workers, sex workers, prisoners. Third, I analyze the hegemonic understanding of “politics” deployed in the corona-crisis. Here I identify two strategies: the promise of returning back to normality and the phantasm of sovereignty that will overcome uncertainties and uncontrollability. I argue that both strategies can be interpreted as capitalist, heteronormative, white, androcentric fetishes. Referring to Stuart Hall who has argued that a key element of hegemony is to make any alternative to the existing social order unthinkable, I argue that these two fetishes aim to conceal that it is the normality of the heteronormative, racialized “disaster capitalism” (N. Klein) that is the social cause of the current crisis.