States of Emergency and the Muselmann in Long-Term Care Homes

In Canada, 84% of COVID-19 related deaths have been in long-term care (LTC) homes, making the proportion of Canadian COVID-19 deaths double the aver-age of all other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to date. This paper attempts to examine how such a devastating proportion of LTC residents could have become the victims of the virus in a country which openly proclaims to have successfully flattened the curve of the virus. 'This paper examines this question by drawing on Agamben's figure of the Muselmann and his thinking about the relation between the state of exception to the rule; specifically, how each secretly institutes each other. In particular, Thobani's and Weheliye's rethinkings of the Muselmann as the site of racialized logics and assemblages are mobilized to illuminate the techniques used to script the bodies of these LTC residents as bare life so their suffering and deaths come be seen as natural and expected in an ever-extending state of emergency.