Andrew Feenberg and the Distorted Democratization of Technology: Covid-19 and the Case of Hydroxychloroquine

Sikka, T

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07877-4_4

Andrew Feenberg and the Distorted Democratization of Technology: Covid-19 and the Case of Hydroxychloroquine

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Tina Sikka ORCiD

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Abstract

© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.This chapter examines the contentious Covid therapeutic, hydroxychloroquine, using Andrew Feenberg’s theory of technological democratization. I explore whether the use of this experimental medicine is suitable, fit for, or reflective of a process of technological democratization in a manner that is similar to that of HIV/AIDS medicines and trials. In answering this, I draw on Feenberg‘s technological democratization thesis and extend his conception of care, bodily integrity, and communication in medicine using a reconstructed concept of care as expressed by feminist ethics. My central argument is that technological democratization of Covid-19 treatments and the underlying science has been made extremely difficult because hydroxychloroquine has become emblematic of polarized and polarizing political battles. In doing so, I articulate a model of “distorted technological democratization” to explain this phenomenon.