The Postdigital in Pandemic Times: a Comment on the Covid-19 Crisis and its Political Epistemologies

In Human Being @ Risk (2013), I offer an existential-phenomenological approach to argue that risk is neither an objective feature of the world or external state of affairs, nor something that we construct in our mind, but is constituted in the subject-object relation or goes beyond that subject-obje...

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Published inPostdigital science and education Vol. 2; no. 3; pp. 547 - 550
Main Author Coeckelbergh, Mark
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cham Springer International Publishing 01.10.2020
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Commentaries
COVID-19
Digital technology
Digitization
Education
Educational Philosophy
Educational Technology
Epistemology
Medical Services
Pandemics
Phenomenology
Philosophy
Social Media
Social networks
Teachers
Technology and Digital Education
Viruses
Phenomenology
Covid-19
Epistemology
Philosophy of technology
Postdigital
Pandemic
Risk
Politics
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Summary:In Human Being @ Risk (2013), I offer an existential-phenomenological approach to argue that risk is neither an objective feature of the world or external state of affairs, nor something that we construct in our mind, but is constituted in the subject-object relation or goes beyond that subject-object binary altogether. Power and the Shaping of Risk For education, this means that educational technologies including so-called digital media—whatever their metaphysical status may be—may play a crucial role not so much in the ‘perception’ of risk and vulnerability by children and young people (as if risk were merely something that is external to them) but rather in shaping their lived and experienced vulnerabilities, their ‘being-at-risk’. Teachers are also important since, regardless of their intention and like all others who have a leading role in this crisis, they not only intervene with regard to knowledge and experience but also unavoidably exercise power in relation to that knowledge. Covid-19 is not only a ‘thing’ but also reveals power relations in their full significance: the raw power exercised by governments when they take measures that restrict the freedom of people (and in some cases use the crisis to assume dictatorial powers) and also the less visible or more subtle power games that
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ISSN:2524-485X
2524-4868
2524-4868
DOI:10.1007/s42438-020-00119-2