Slow emergencies: Temporality and the racialized biopolitics of emergency governance. (August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Anderson, Ben; Grove, Kevin; Rickards, Lauren; Kearnes, Matthew
• Is Part Of: Progress in human geography. Volume 44:Number 4(2020)
• Page Start: 621
• Page End: 639
• Publication Date: 2020-08
• Subjects: damage -- emergency -- governing -- harm; Human geography -- Periodicals; 304.2
• DOI: 10.1177/0309132519849263
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0309-1325

Abstract

How lives are governed through emergency is a critical issue for our time. In this paper, we build on scholarship on this issue by developing the concept of 'slow emergencies'. We do so to attune to situations of harm that call into question what forms of life can and should be secured by apparatuses of emergency governance. Through drawing together work on emergency and on racialization, we define 'slow emergencies' as situations marked by a) attritional lethality; b) imperceptibility; c) the foreclosure of the capacity to become otherwise; d) emergency claims. We conclude with a call to reclaim 'emergency'.