[Public Lecture] Medical Populism and the Covid-19 Pandemic

On December 6, 2021, I gave a public lecture entitled "Medical Populism and the Covid-19 Pandemic” to the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin. The public lecture was organized by Dr. Andrea Fleschenberg and Dr. Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo as part of the "Covid Governmentalities in Transregional Perspective - Public Guest Lectures.

In the lecture, I provided an overview of the concept of medical populism, and used its framework of spectacularization, simplification, and division to make sense of the politics of COVID-19 pandemic. I also introduced the concept of 'pharmaceutical messianism', which I argue is one of the most prominent manifestations of medical populism today.