Author: gabriela.sarosiek.18

Over the past weeks, we have explored topics relating to the overarching theme of crisis and disease. The areas explored have been engaging, and opened my mind to things I previously I had not considered. I found myself most deeply engaging with topics which related to the experiences of women through crisis and disease. Predominantly, I found the topic of HIV/AIDS affected me quite deeply through my discovery of the HIV positive poet Mary Bowman.

Initially approaching the topic through Musa W. Dube’s anecdotal essay reflecting on the AIDS/HIV pandemic in Botswana, I was touched by the human experience of the virus. This led me to dig deeper, and find the work of Mary Bowman.

Dube’s text brings up many fascinating points on discourse surrounding the pandemic, particularly how language builds a narrative which extends to the national and social scale. A particularly poignant quotation which I’d like to unpack reads as follows:

“I describe HIV and AIDS as a text that wrote itself upon our physical and social bodies.”

Breaking this down, I’d like to think about the usage of the term “text” to describe HIV/AIDS, and the concept of physical and social bodies.

In this statement the pandemic is described as an active force acting “upon” the nation. There is a sense of the pandemic being central to the narrative of a nation’s identity through its description as a text in this active form. It is not a passive part of the nation’s story, but rather integral to it—the author seems to consider the pandemic as part of Botswana itself.

This gained further multitudes when I considered what could be meant by this idea of “physical and social bodies”. Clearly, HIV physically affects the body. However, Dube’s idea of the “social” body stood out as it gets to the root of what differentiates a pandemic from just a prevalent disease. A pandemic deeply affects these social bodies, whether these bodies be families, local communities, or otherwise.

The text goes on to consider “The historic discovery of HIV among gay communities, and later among other vulnerable communities such as sex workers and injecting drug addicts, seemingly associated the virus with sexual and moral discourse.” This furthers these ideas of the “social” body. A narrative was constructed which categorised the nation into groups of higher and lower morality, associating the virus with these groups.

This all gave a much greater sense to what Treichler perhaps meant writing “The AIDS epidemic is simultaneously an epidemic of a transmissible lethal disease and an epidemic of meanings or signification.” This writing of HIV as a text upon social bodies, separated by community, does indeed make it an epidemic of signification. Ingrained beliefs about the communities at the heart of the discovery of the virus adds signification upon both these communities, and upon the story of the virus itself.

The poetry of Mary Bowman reflects on these ideas, in a somewhat abstract way. The idea of HIV acting upon the “social” body is poignant here as Bowman was born HIV positive as a result of her mother’s drug addiction. In this case, the “social” body is that of the family. This poem, Dandelions, was Bowman’s way of revealing that she had lived with HIV her whole life, and the stigma surrounding the virus. Bowman’s mother died when the poet was just three as a result of complications. One line in particular stands out in light of Dube’s and Treichler’s ideas.

“I will gladly give myself as the sacrifice if it means that all the dandelions in the world become viewed as more than the consequence of sins behind closed doors.”

The experience of these two women—the woman speaking, and the woman spoken about—was deeply affective. A further topic which struck me was a discussion of women and how data affects diversity and equality.

A line from Simone de Beavoir’s introduction to her seminal work, The Second Sex, is a strong sounding off point for discussing this issue: “Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him.”

In this particular week’s lecture, the point was made that “as mathematical representations of how systems work, they are dependent on assumptions already written in”.

If the default assumption is man, how does this affect women? As de Beauvoir said, humanity is male. Language is gendered, “man” refers to humans. Alma Graham’s oft-quoted analogy is apt here:

“If a woman is swept off a ship into the water, the cry is ‘Man overboard!’ If she is killed by a hit-and-run driver, the charge is ‘manslaughter!’ If she is injured on the job, the coverage is ‘workman’s compensation!’ But if she arrives at a threshold marked ‘Men Only,’ she knows the admonition is not intended to bar animals or plants or inanimate objects. It is meant for her.” (Graham)

If the systems supposed to serve us begin at a point of masculinity, this harms women everywhere. A clear example of the ways in which quantifiable data harms women is the GDP.

The European Institute for Gender Equality has found that:

• Improving gender equality would lead to an increase in EU (GDP) per capita by 6.1 to 9.6%, which amounts to €1.95 to €3.15 trillion by 2050
• Improvements in gender equality would lead to an additional 10.5 million jobs in 2050
• Countries with more room to improve gender equality have much to gain. On average, improved gender equality in these countries is expected to lead to an increase in GDP of about 12% by 2050

 

The last point was especially significant to me, as I’m originally from Poland and current debate around women’s reproductive rights highlight just this. In January, a near total ban on abortion was passed. Further to this, a Government policy named 500 Plus awards families a benefit of 500PLN per month per child, a clear encouragement for women to stay home and be homemakers. This brings me to my main criticism of this EIGE study. It does not consider the impact which accounting for only male-dominated, classically value-creating activities, disregarding domestic and caregiving activities. Riane Eisler, author of The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, has conducted research which shows that were this caregiving and domestic work to be included in the GDP,  it would constitute between 30% and 50% of the GDP.

This is a blatant show of the ways in which data is skewed against women. This shows the ways in which the systems we base much of our daily life on, from the language we speak and how it is coded, to the world’s foremost economic indicator, are all rooted in the assumption of male as default.

To conclude, the topics which I felt most strongly engaged with were the human stories behind this overarching theme of disease and crisis, particularly the stories of women. Though seemingly disparate topics, both these areas covered stories of an entire cross-section of society disregarded, and how this can be rectified. In the case of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Bowman’s poem is a wishful one, hoping for an end to the stigma associated with the virus. In the case of the effect of data on gender equality, the prevailing story is also one of hope—of what can be gained if rather than perpetrating inequality, we recognise the failings of our current systems and remedy them.

References

Alexander, Reed. “Is One Of The World’s Most Widely Used Financial Metrics — GDP — Sexist?”. Marketwatch, 2021, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-one-of-the-worlds-most-widely-used-financial-metrics-gdp-sexist-2018-01-11.

Dube, Musa W. “The HIV and AIDS Collective Memory: Anecdotal Notes on Texts of Trauma, Care-Giving and Positive Living.” Botswana Notes and Records, vol. 48, 2016, pp. 435–438. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/90025361. Accessed 25 Mar. 2021.

“Economic Benefits Of Gender Equality In The EU”. European Institute For Gender Equality, 2021, https://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/policy-areas/economic-and-financial-affairs/economic-benefits-gender-equality.

Graham, Alma. “The Making Of A Nonsexist Dictionary”. Language And Sex: Difference And Dominance, B Thorne and N Henley, Newbury House Publishers, Rowley, Mass, 1975, Accessed 26 Mar 2021.

Treichler, Paula A. How To Have Theory In An Epidemic. Duke University Press, 1999, p. 11.

 

“Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him.” – Simone de Beavoir, The Second Sex.

In this week’s lecture, the point was made that “as mathematical representations of how systems work, they are dependent on assumptions already written in”.

If the default assumption is man, how does this affect women? As de Beauvoir said, humanity is male. Language is gendered, “man” refers to humans. Alma Graham’s oft-quoted analogy is apt here:

“If a woman is swept off a ship into the water, the cry is ‘Man overboard!’ If she is killed by a hit-and-run driver, the charge is ‘manslaughter!’ If she is injured on the job, the coverage is ‘workman’s compensation!’ But if she arrives at a threshold marked ‘Men Only,’ she knows the admonition is not intended to bar animals or plants or inanimate objects. It is meant for her.” (Graham)

If the systems supposed to serve us begin at a point of masculinity, this harms women everywhere. A clear example of the ways in which quantifiable data harms women is the GDP.

The European Institute for Gender Equality has found that:

• Improving gender equality would lead to an increase in EU (GDP) per capita by 6.1 to 9.6%, which amounts to €1.95 to €3.15 trillion by 2050
• Improvements in gender equality would lead to an additional 10.5 million jobs in 2050
• Countries with more room to improve gender equality have much to gain. On average, improved gender equality in these countries is expected to lead to an increase in GDP of about 12% by 2050

 

The last point was especially significant to me, as I’m originally from Poland and current debate around women’s reproductive rights highlight just this. In January, a near total ban on abortion was passed. Further to this, a Government policy named 500 Plus awards families a benefit of 500PLN per month per child, a clear encouragement for women to stay home and be homemakers. This brings me to my main criticism of this EIGE study. It does not consider the impact which accounting for only male-dominated, classically value-creating activities, disregarding domestic and caregiving activities. Riane Eisler, author of The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, has conducted research which shows that were this caregiving and domestic work to be included in the GDP,  it would constitute between 30% and 50% of the GDP.

This is a blatant show of the ways in which data is skewed against women. This shows the ways in which the systems we base much of our daily life on, from the language we speak and how it is coded, to the world’s foremost economic indicator, are all rooted in the assumption of male as default.

References
Graham, Alma. “The Making Of A Nonsexist Dictionary”. Language And Sex: Difference And Dominance, B Thorne and N Henley, Newbury House Publishers, Rowley, Mass, 1975, Accessed 26 Mar 2021.

“Economic Benefits Of Gender Equality In The EU”. European Institute For Gender Equality, 2021, https://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/policy-areas/economic-and-financial-affairs/economic-benefits-gender-equality.

Alexander, Reed. “Is One Of The World’s Most Widely Used Financial Metrics — GDP — Sexist?”. Marketwatch, 2021, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-one-of-the-worlds-most-widely-used-financial-metrics-gdp-sexist-2018-01-11.

The subject of this week feels especially topical right now, as President Biden has just signed the most significant expansion of healthcare provision in the United States since the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The American Rescue Plan is set to help 1.3 million Americans gain access to healthcare coverage. However, in light of the topics discussed, this seems to pale as an achievement. The ICESCR (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) has been ratified by 171 states. This protects ‘the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’. However, the United States is not one of the states which has ratified the covenant.

In a population counting approximately 331 people, healthcare cover for an additional 1.3 million sounds lacklustre. The question raised of what the ‘highest attainable standard of health’ quite means, and whether the same standard can be applied to rich as poor countries gains traction here. The USA has the highest GDP in the world, enjoying a 24% share of the world’s GDP (Worldometers). To be one of 24 states not part of the ICESCR is surprising.

Lamm raises some interesting points in his essay “The Case Against Making Healthcare a “Right””:

“How Do You Buy Health for Society? One inevitable result of the healthcare dialogue in other countries is that the focus shifts from the individual to the larger question of: How do you buy health for society? These nations have come to the common sense conclusion that public policy ought to maximize a nation’s health, not healthcare.”

The essay is an American based one, so we must keep in mind that the USA did not sign the ICESCR, however this distinction between health and healthcare is very much as at odds with the definition of health found in the covenant:

“Consequently, the right to health must be understood as a right to the enjoyment of a variety of facilities, goods, services and conditions necessary for the realization of the highest attainable standard of health.”

This appears to define health and healthcare much as one, symbiotic idea. To have health, one must have healthcare in direct correlation to a state’s provision. My personal opinion falls more in line with this. As the above image demonstrates, access to healthcare is a moral issue. This does not mean it is not political—political issues themselves are inherently moral. Etymologically, the two words are clearly related. “Political” quite literally means relating to the Greek politēs, or citizen. “Moral” comes from the Latin moralis, or “proper behavior of a person in society”. Healthcare is an issue affecting the welfare of all those in society, it is therefore a moral and political issue.

References
“GDP By Country – Worldometer”. Worldometers.Info, 2021, https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/.

Lamm, Richard D. “The Case Against Making Healthcare a ‘Right.’” Human Rights, vol. 25, no. 4, 1998, pp. 8–11. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27880117. Accessed 26 Mar. 2021.

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, as discussed in this weeks’ lecture, “is a literary work and no handbook for us, under COVID. But it can serve as the jumping off for contemporary reflections.”

Considering this with relation to the ideas of sovereignty and fantasies of power led me to seek out contemporary responses to those handling the current COVID pandemic, and see how our responses to power and sovereignty relate to those presented by Poe.

Firstly, I’d like to introduce a few headlines discussing the role of Boris Johnson in response to COVID.

Poe’s text shows sovereignty as fallible, with death holding ultimate sovereignty. This is exemplified in the following passage, during which Prince Prospero refers to the Red Death with terms such as “blasphemous mockery”:

““Who dares” — he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him – “who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him — that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, from the battlements!””

Relating these ideas of sovereignty to today’s pandemic, it is interesting to note the partisan lines across which this sovereignty is afforded to our leaders. As in the above examples, one Spectator headline reads “Boris Johnson isn’t the only one to blame for Britain’s Covid Crisis”. Meanwhile, The Guardian is much more negative, with headlines such as “Johnson Marks Year Since First Lockdown—Knowing he Acted Far Too Late”. The two publications, on opposite sides of the political spectrum, clearly define the sovereignty of our political leaders very differently when it comes to their stand against our current “Red Death”.

Interestingly, The Spectator headline appears to paint Johnson as fallible, not entirely at fault for the COVID crisis. Here, though they are in support of Johnson, his sovereignty is not ultimate. The Guardian, however, despite being critical of Johnson paints him as an infallible figure. His shortcomings are seen as astute and ultimate. He is entirely to blame. He perhaps should be sovereign over the pandemic.

Though Poe’s text is a fantasy piece, the ideas of sovereignty it raises are very applicable to the ways we discuss political power today with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic.

References
Allegretti, Aubrey, and Jessica Elgot. “Covid: ‘Greed’ And Capitalism Behind Vaccine Success, Johnson Tells Mps”. The Guardian, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/23/greed-and-capitalism-behind-jab-success-boris-johnson-tells-mps.

Crace, John. “Johnson Marks Year Since First Lockdown – Knowing He Acted Far Too Late | John Crace”. The Guardian, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/23/boris-johnson-admits-he-will-forever-be-haunted-by-englands-covid-death-toll.

Cohen, Nick. Spectator.Co.Uk, 2021, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-isn-t-the-only-one-to-blame-for-britain-s-covid-crisis.

I’d like to base my response to this week’s topic heavily on Musa W. Dube’s anecdotal essay reflecting on the AIDS/HIV pandemic in Botswana.

The text brings up many fascinating points on discourse surrounding the pandemic, particularly how language builds a narrative which extends to the national and social scale. A particularly poignant quotation which I’d like to unpack reads as follows:

“I describe HIV and AIDS as a text that wrote itself upon our physical and social bodies.”

Breaking this down, I’d like to think about the usage of the term “text” to describe HIV/AIDS, and the concept of physical and social bodies.

In this statement the pandemic is described as an active force acting “upon” the nation. There is a sense of the pandemic being central to the narrative of a nation’s identity through its description as a text in this active form. It is not a passive part of the nation’s story, but rather integral to it—the author seems to consider the pandemic as part of Botswana itself.

This gained further multitudes when I considered what could be meant by this idea of “physical and social bodies”. Clearly, HIV physically affects the body. However, Dube’s idea of the “social” body stood out as it gets to the root of what differentiates a pandemic from just a prevalent disease. A pandemic deeply affects these social bodies, whether these bodies be families, local communities, or otherwise.

The text goes on to consider “The historic discovery of HIV among gay communities, and later among other vulnerable communities such as sex workers and injecting drug addicts, seemingly associated the virus with sexual and moral discourse.” This furthers these ideas of the “social” body. A narrative was constructed which categorised the nation into groups of higher and lower morality, associating the virus with these groups.

This all gave a much greater sense to what Treichler perhaps meant writing “The AIDS epidemic is simultaneously an epidemic of a transmissible lethal disease and an epidemic of meanings or signification.” This writing of HIV as a text upon social bodies, separated by community, does indeed make it an epidemic of signification. Ingrained beliefs about the communities at the heart of the discovery of the virus adds signification upon both these communities, and upon the story of the virus itself.

I’d like to end this post by sharing a poem by Mary Bowman, an American poet born HIV positive. This poem, Dandelions, was Bowman’s way of revealing that she had lived with HIV her whole life as a result of her mother’s drug addiction. Bowman’s mother died when the poet was just three as a result of complications. One line in particular stands out in light of Dube’s and Treichler’s ideas.

“I will gladly give myself as the sacrifice if it means that all the dandelions in the world become viewed as more than the consequence of sins behind closed doors.”

References

Dube, Musa W. “The HIV and AIDS Collective Memory: Anecdotal Notes on Texts of Trauma, Care-Giving and Positive Living.” Botswana Notes and Records, vol. 48, 2016, pp. 435–438. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/90025361. Accessed 25 Mar. 2021.

Treichler, Paula A. How To Have Theory In An Epidemic. Duke University Press, 1999, p. 11.

I’d like to begin this post by taking a moment to think about the roots of the word crisis, where it comes from, and its etymology. The word originates from the Greek krisis, meaning “decisive moment”.

In the early 15th century, crisis was taken to mean a “decisive point in the progress of a disease,” as well as “vitally important or decisive state of things, point at which change must come, for better or worse,”. This came from the Latinised form of the Greek krisis.

In the context of our learning thus far, it is interesting that it was in the 15th century that the word was directly linked to disease. In the century following the Black Death, it appeared that crisis and memories of disease become linked in the collective linguistic psyche of the English world.

Koselleck delves deeply into distinctions between definitions of crisis in political, medical and social language.  An aspect of his text which stood out most prominently was the bringing together of all these very different areas. “At all times the concept is applied to life-deciding alternatives meant to answer questions about what is just or unjust, what contributes to salvation or damnation, what furthers health or brings death.” (361).

The cohesiveness of defining crisis as a concept applied to life-deciding alternatives is interesting in light of topics covered. In relation to climate change, it is a question of justice or lack thereof when considering the economic inequality inherent in climate change. In relation to plague, ideas of salvation or damnation relate to religious beliefs about the cause of plague.

References
Koselleck, Reinhart, and Michaela W. Richter. “Crisis.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 67, no. 2, 2006, pp. 357–400. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30141882. Accessed 26 Mar. 2021.

Parker’s “Did Someone Say ‘Climate Change’?” lays out the ways in which climate change has significantly affected humanity throughout history. To be confronted with the very real crisis extreme weather brings about in quantitive terms was shocking, however this was made all the more shocking when upon doing some of my own research I found that “data released in 2020 shows that the average global surface temperature has risen over 1 degree Celsius—about 2 degrees Fahrenheit—since the pre-industrial 19th century. That’s faster than at any other time in the Earth’s history—roughly eight times faster than the global warming that occurred after the ice ages.” (Amadeo) Comparatively, Parker states: “Finally, in the mid-seventeenth century, the earth experienced some of the coldest weather recorded in over a millennium. Perhaps one-third of the human population died.” (15)

When reading the two in tandem, the rate at which the climate change is currently occurring and escalating led me to consider the ways in which we may see climate change affect parts of life that we don’t traditionally associate with extreme weather. When thinking of climate change, images of natural disasters and extreme conditions come to mind. It is less common to consider factors like disease or GDP when thinking about modern climate change.

An example of the modern impacts of climate change

This interested me greatly, and I was surprised at the amount daily, economic factors which climate change affects.

• Insurance
  An increase in extreme weather occurrences will naturally lead to an increase in insurance premiums. This may become unattainable for some, leaving them uninsured in case of this extreme weather. The 2018 California wildfires say $18b dollars of insured damage (of $24b total), meaning insurance companies may begin raising their premiums as this extreme weather becomes more frequent.
• GDP
  A 2015 Stanford study has found that there is a 71% change climate change will have a negative impact on global GDP. The study found there was a 51% chance that global GDP could fall by 20%. To contextualise this, GDP fell 26.7% during the Great Depression.
• Economic Inequality
  It is impossible to discuss GDP without considering the economic inequality this brings. A Stanford News piece found that “the gap between the group of nations with the highest and lowest economic output per person is now approximately 25 percent larger than it would have been without climate change” and “the biggest emitters enjoy on average about 10 percent higher per capita GDP today than they would have in a world without warming”. (Garthwaite) This climate driven fall in GDP is therefore clearly likelier to affect those countries already most economically vulnerable.
• Immigration
  As natural disasters increase in frequency, the devastation they bring will lead to an increase of climate refugees. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has estimated that between 2008-2017, 22.5m people were displaced due to climate-related events. This will likely have ensuing political effects, particularly in areas with already fraught tensions such as the southern US border.
• Food Prices
  Immigration and food prices are intrinsically linked. The factors leading to climate-driven immigration, such as drought and shifting rain patterns lead to crop issues, causing migrants go leave their homes due to food insecurity whilst also driving up food prices. This may lead to fresh produce becoming less attainable for some, a big indicator of the economic inequality caused by climate change.

References

Amadeo, Kimberly. “What Has Climate Change Cost Us? What’s Being Done?”. The Balance, 2021, https://www.thebalance.com/economic-impact-of-climate-change-3305682.

Garthwaite, Josie. “Climate Change Has Worsened Global Economic Inequality | Stanford News”. Stanford News, 2019, https://news.stanford.edu/2019/04/22/climate-change-worsened-global-economic-inequality/#:~:text=Climate%20change%20has%20worsened%20global%20economic%20inequality%2C%20Stanford%20study%20shows,new%20research%20from%20Stanford%20University.

Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year takes us forward in time, from the Black Death of 1348 to London’s plague in 1665.

The nature of this text is of note, written as if it is a first person account though published over 50 years after the events it describes. The symbiosis between fact and fiction in the text has been fiercely debated, with general consensus appearing to fall with this being a fictionalised account rooted in much research, and based at least in part on primary accounts. Critics have struggled to categorise the text as one or the other, or decide which side it errs on. Mayer’s “The Reception of a Journal of the Plague Year and the Nexus of Fiction and History in the Novel” provides a fantastic overview of varying positions. He concludes a discussion of various critics’ positions with the rather irresolute:

“Alternatively concretized as history, fiction, or history-fiction, the Journal’s ontological status has remained undecidable throughout the history of its reception” (Mayer 544)

The audit style recounting of death counts contributes to a sense of reliability, rooting the more emotive aspects of the novel in a sense of reality. This brought to mind points raised during week 1 about the humanity inherent in the act of recording administrative documents amidst crisis.

The switch to a different, more emotive tone when talking about the human consequence of the plague was also of note. There is something incredible about reading a text and aspects of it resounding centuries lately. In particular, one passage stands out:

“The Face of London was now indeed strangely alter’d, I mean the whole Mass of Buildings, City,  Liberties, Suburbs, W’estminster, Southwark and altogether; for as to the particular part called the City, or within the Walls, that was not yet much infected; but in the whole, the Face of Things, I say, was much alter’d; Sorrow and Sadness sat upon every Face; and tho’ some Part were not yet overwhelm’d yet all look’d deeply concern’d”

This sentiment feels very familiar, with the same sense of a city altered and its inhabitants concerned felt acutely around the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

References
Mayer, Robert. “The Reception of a Journal of the Plague Year and the Nexus of Fiction and History in the Novel.” ELH, vol. 57, no. 3, 1990, pp. 529–555. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2873233. Accessed 21 Mar. 2021.

1. Approaching this week, many of the preconceptions I had about the plague were addressed. As anticipated, images bought to mind when thinking of the plague involved plague doctors with long masks, rats, and sores.

Of the information presented, I was particularly interested in the reasons Medieval people thought the plague had come about, and the religious overtones of this. The primary sources made for interesting reading, in particular the document entitled “The Flagellants” in Horrox’s The Black Plague. It was interesting to note the dissonance between the calls for pious acts of penance in previous letters, and the the disdain for these flagellants. The reasoning for this, of usurping the order of teachers in the Church, implies that acts of penance were only acceptable when performed under the supervision of the Church, in ways deemed acceptable.

Another point of interest was the seeming parallels between today’s Covid-19 pandemic, and the plague. References made to “the disease from the East” struck a chord, as did discussion of the ways in which the disease would have spread through ports. Today’s equivalent is the manner in which international travel exacerbated the spread of Covid, contributing to the vastly differing rates of infection in those countries which closed their borders, and those which did not. Further to this, the belief that plague was spread by miasmas, or bad smells, brings to mind modern fears about the spread of germs through air. It is easy to imagine the inhabitants of Medieval Europe avoiding these miasmas much as we today avoid crowds or unventilated spaces. A further similarity which stood out was the act of singing as an act of devotion. I could not help but remember scenes of neighbourhoods singing from their balconies during the very first lockdowns.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic has upended lives, shifted views, and changed the way we live. However, throughout, we have grasped at a sense of normalcy. This theme was striking throughout Professor Laura Ashe’s programme, Plague Fiction. I’d like to explore this through the lens of documentation which Professor Ashe calls upon.

The example explored of administrative documentation through times of great difficulty as an act of humanity struck me. I, and I am sure many of us, have developed an almost subconscious habit of checking Covid-19 statistics daily. Every morning, in much the same way as I consume morning news along with my breakfast, I click through a graph charting the fall in cases. I seek out articles outlining the vaccination rollout. It seems that documentation does not solely exist as a way of memorialising fact, but as a way of building hope. This of course is a double edged sword. Over the early months of 2021, we watched cases rise exponentially. An insurmountable mountain of a graph appeared upon my screen every morning. Yet, in a strange way, this still brought with it hope. It is a basic law of physics that anything which goes up, must also come down. Watching this rise, I was instead heartened by the solidarity brought about through crisis. I watched my peers train to become vaccinators and volunteers, strangers gave way on park pathways, and masks were to be seen everywhere.

It feels somewhat as if this act of searching for information was embedded in the desire for normalcy. By building this into a routine which would exist regardless of a pandemic, a sense of control over the situation grows.

These thoughts which arose as I watched were complicated by my reading of Caduff’s “What Went Wrong”. In it, Caduff states “I have tried to carve a path through the morass of fear, panic, and desire for control to see how one can sustain a critical analysis of the pandemic response.” This implies that a desire for control is at odds with a critical analysis of pandemic response. This led me to reflect on the place of critical analysis versus the sense of humanity discussed in Professor Ashe’s programme. In the documentation of death counts, there seems to be rife opportunity for both critical analysis and a more human recognition of this desire for control, and thus normalcy.