A meditation on Covid-19 social trauma

ABSTRACT

This article explores covid-19 as a social traumatic event that thoroughly disrupted our ordinary plane of existence. In doing so, it opened a window to an uncanny world, in which the virus, manifesting profuse agentic capacity, repurposes to its benefit, to travel and multiply, human bodies and various global assemblages. Covid-19 pandemic’s challenge to the social grounding structure in turn perturbs our sense of ontological security. Meditating on these aspects, the article identifies the pandemic as a liminal situation that confronts humanity with all four givens of existence: death, freedom, isolation, and meaningless. Written during these unique global circumstances, the article directs its attention towards covid-19 social trauma and to several societal responses. These take the form of conspiratorial mythical thinking, communities formed around a shared existential state of vulnerability, as well as emancipation and revolutionary political acts.

KEYWORDS:

• social trauma
• covid-19
• ontological security
• conspiracy theories
• myth
• vulnerability
• solidarity
• revolutionary political act

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ I am using the framework introduced by Erinn C. Gilson in The ethics of vulnerability: A feminist analysis of social life and practice.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Florentina C. Andreescu

Florentina C. Andreescu is Associate Professor in International Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her most recent publications include: ‘Rethinking Intimacy in Psychosocial Sciences’ (Psychotherapy and Politics International, 2020) and ‘Donald Trump’s Appeal: a Socio-Psychoanalytic Analysis’ (Journal for Cultural Research, 2019).