Elderly in COVID-19: An Examination of Creative Power

Abstract

This purpose of this essay is to analyze Ontario’s broken long- term care homes through Michel Foucault’s framework of power. Considering the disproportionate death rate of the elderly population during the peak of COVID-19, the discussion about how this group is regulated and controlled is paramount. I aim to examine the disciplinary and regulatory powers which govern long-term care through careful examination of interactions between the elderly, healthcare workers, government officials, care home CEOs, and the general population. I will firstly explore how long-term care homes discipline the elderly population to be obedient and infantilized objects so that neglect can persist in the homes. I will then apply Foucault’s framework of biopolitics to discuss the process through which power has manufactured the elderly to be a distinct, burdensome population legible to abuse and discrimination in all areas of social and political life. By discussing the intricacies of power being applied to the elderly population, we can sooner acknowledge that the high mortality rate of the elderly from COVID-19 is not just a product of the lethal virus, but more urgently, an expression of the deadly creative power which combines the normalizing disciplinary and regulatory powers. My paper concludes with the argument that the high mortality rate of the elderly during COVID is not only an effect of the virus, but more importantly the effect of the state subjugating these individuals to neglect and abuse.