Nation, Class, and Corporeal Vulnerability: Covid Tales from India

• In Event: Transnational Medical Inequity: Healthcare, Rights, and Vulnerabilities.

Abstract

Lopamudra Basu
University of Wisconsin-Stout.

My paper will be based on my own experiences of trauma and loss resulting from the Covid losses of family members in India in May 2021. I juxtapose personal narratives with texts like Barkha Dutt's ITV interview after the death of her father as well as other testimonies. I examine Judith Butler's urgent question "What makes for a grievable life?" Following Butler, Within the context of India, the pandemic exposed the fragility of the health system and stripped the aura of invulnerability of the urban middle classes, the largest beneficiaries of the neoliberal order.

Presenter

• Lopamudra Basu, University of Wisconsin-Stout