Biopolitics

What happens when a society faces mass death, with no time to grieve or organize? What happens when the dead become mere numbers, treated as public health threats rather than people?

John Wilson Fall '24

The Biopolitics of Death: Mass Burials in the Black Death and COVID-19

Running Hypothesis

Mass burials during both pandemics served not only as emergency solutions to the overwhelming death toll but also as biopolitical tools that reflect the state’s role in regulating mortality and societal order. By utilizing and comparing archaeological evidence from the Black Death and contemporary data from COVID-19, seek to explore how both pandemics disrupted personal mourning rituals, promoted mass, impersonal responses to death, and fostered collective societal trauma.

- Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, (1353).

"The plague had no regard for the rich or the poor, the young or the old. The world seemed to be in chaos, where men and women, once bound by the social fabric, now acted only out of self-preservation, abandoning all sense of duty and familial ties. The city streets were emptied, and families were torn apart as if the bonds of humanity were severed by the mere presence of death."

Biopolitics

the regulation of populations through control over life processes, including birth, health, and death

Plague Pits

Mass graves for victims of the Bubonic Plague

Mass Burials/Graves

Modern term for grave containing multiple human corpses, many go unidentified

coincidence???

• Hereford saint, named St. Thomas Cantilupe, canonised in 1320
• Christians believed praying to saint brought them help
• Magnificent shrine made in the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral
• St. Thomas transferred there in lavish ceremony in 1349...

Parading the spread...

East Smithfield plague pits

- Hereford Cathedral

- East Smithfield

• Hart Island, located in the Bronx, is the only location the City currently uses to bury the bodies of the unclaimed or unidentified.Most individuals buried on Hart Island (approximately 62 percent in 2018) have a next of kin who opted for a public burial.Others may have a next of kin who is unknown or unreachable (33 percent).Some are unidentified or do not have a next of kin.Fifteen people or fewer are unidentified each year, and about 21 percent of the burials are fetal remains.

Hart Island

Differences

• Modern-day records
• Technological responses
• Global effect of Covid

Similarities

• Quarantines
• Travel Restirctions
• Mass Burials
• Poor/Working class disproportionately affected