Pandemics and Paradigms of Contestation

Abstract

Paradigms of governance are defined in part by paradigms of contestation—stockpiles of culturally legible tactics for contesting power. This article analyzes the growing use of hard-block and mutual aid tactics in Metulia (sometimes called Victoria, B.C.) as exemplars that suggest liberal paradigms of contestation may be becoming less rigid. Drawing on Robert Cover and Charles Tilly, I argue that the present conjuncture is not, as many analyses suggest, merely a tipping point between one paradigm and the next. Rather, it is a creative moment of experimentation and indeterminacy defined by multiple crises, multiple emergences, and their unpredictable interactions.