Settler State Crises: The Biopolitics of Risk and Exceptional Spaces in Occupied Hawaiʻi

Keywords: Hawaii, biopolitics, settler colonialism, militarism
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 42

Abstract

This paper investigates the disparate and uneven distribution of a biopolitics of risk emerging in and out of the settler state of Hawaiʻi’s response to COVID through the production of three exceptional spaces: military bases, tourist enclaves and enclosures, and the multi-generational home. The crises onset by the pandemic illuminates the fragilities, limits, and expanses of settler state sovereignties. From the lack of accounting of covid cases on military bases to robot dogs patrolling houseless people to multi-family households as leaky spaces of contagion, this paper explores the intensification of security, surveillance, and discipline as they traverse different formulations of risk. However, in situating the struggle for life at the center of community responses to the pandemic, I examine various conceptualizations of Hawaiian sovereignties based on alternative networks of information and care. This paper concludes by tracing the historical and endemic conditions of these sovereignties that allow for both mutual aid and anti-vaccination groups to form. Ultimately, this is a conversation about the many futures of Hawaiian sovereignties and how we can build towards communities that are not constrained by biopolitical criteria of risk or on internal divisions in future crises.