Institut Ramon LLull

Jordi Pigem analyses the societal impact of Covid-19. His distilled, humorous prose outlines the Chinese and North American models of society, which embody the two main dystopian models of the 20th century: the dictatorial surveillance of 1984 and the stupefying distractions of Brave New World. These superpowers have forged a discourse of fear that has accelerated our transformation into oblivious, monitored individuals. To deal with this threat, the author seeks references away from technocracy to build a response where health, technology and life can interact without algorithms distorting things.

In classical medicine, the disease was just one of the points of the triangle that included the person and the doctor. The relationship between patient and physician was essential. But now the patient has faded away, while the pathogen and the remedy have taken centre stage. Medicine has stopped being the art of healing and become merely technical, which is ideal for a technocapitalist society.