The great pause: a minor theory exploration of COVID-19 response in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

As Europe and the wider world struggles with the COVID-19 crisis, I unpack the impacts of the pandemic on the small, wealthy, and diverse nation of Switzerland. Though deeply intertwined with capital flows and global scales, I eschew a high-level view and instead present an analysis from the ground, informed by minor theory. This micropolitical view enables a nuanced understanding of how the city and the nation are produced in daily life, while the pandemic allows an exploration of what occurs when these processes are interrupted. This investigation reveals unique, situated cartographies of everyday experience that, under pressure of lockdown, reconfigured according to individual, cantonal, and national circumstances.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• minor theory
• micropolitics
• everyday life
• Switzerland

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Michael Gentile and Craig Young for their encouragement and support, and Michele Lancione for his inspirational introduction to minor thinking.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.