![]() ![]() In NYC, certain downtown neighbourhoods like SoHo and the West village were relatively emptied and suffered few coronavirus casualties while others, like Harlem and Washington Heights, remained full and experienced significantly higher mortality rates. Because of racialized capitalism and uneven geospatial distribution, wealthy white urbanites were able to flee New York City during the height of the coronavirus pandemic escaping the most dire effects of the virus, while the poorer brown and black inhabitants remained to get infected and die. But while the pandemic city is empty of some people, it is full of others. While we see this in films like the 2007 I am Legend, the 2013 video game The Last of Us and the 2018 novel Severance by Ling Ma, we have also read about this in countless news reports during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Unlike other dystopic or catastrophic imaginaries, pandemic fiction often portrays an emptied but intact city. Pandemic fictions, an increasingly popular genre, help mould and imagine this constellation. ![]() The coronavirus pandemic has revealed or reminded us of the biopolitical assemblage: biology and politics have grown ever increasingly intertwined in the last two centuries as populations become the site and raison d’etre of political power. ![]()
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