key: cord-0686683-n6hpgrsc
authors: Cuberos‐Gallardo, Francisco J.
title: COVID‐19 and spatio‐temporal disjuncture in the experience of danger
date: 2020-06-08
journal: Soc Anthropol
DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12878
sha: f4ff3b29c85a12dc08a3961c2f57a45d493a6b2f
doc_id: 686683
cord_uid: n6hpgrsc

nan

COVID-19 and spatio-temporal disjuncture in the experience of danger Anthropologist Marc Abélès (2006) argues that the main consequence of globalisation is that we will never again be safe from a threatening elsewhere. In global society, the experience of danger occurs in terms of omnipresence and immediacy. A Europeaneducated Egyptian terrorist crashes a plane in Manhattan. A mortgage crisis in the USA destroys jobs in Seville. A virus that appeared in Wuhan soon provokes declarations of alarm by the State in half of Europe. The COVID-19 crisis also reflects a disjuncture of the spatio-temporal coordinates that structured the danger long ago.

It is sufficient to note how the threat of contagion makes those closest to you the most dangerous. Compared to the classic architecture of danger, where the threat materialises in an other that can be kept at a distance, coronavirus makes our most immediate physical and affective environment dangerous. Quarantine measures isolate us from our physical environment, and cause by compensation an exponential increase in internet traffic in countries like Spain. The same threat that separates you from your neighbours brings you closer to Hollywood movies, Netflix series and message chains on Facebook or WhatsApp.

On the other hand, the COVID-19 crisis also radically alters our perception of danger in temporal terms. First, because the lack of control over the threat causes its time limits to blur. The exceptional nature of quarantine is thus projected into the future, rather than as a technical measure, as an undetermined horizon. In addition, the organisation of working time is strongly affected, with people who see their labour pressure doubled due to the effect of teleworking and others who are left in the new 'limbo' of temporary layoffs. Finally, a third temporary disjuncture makes the coronavirus threat seem new and familiar to us at the same time. Movies like Contagion (2011) or Virus (2013), or series like Chernobyl have recreated conditions that are surprisingly similar to those we live in today. The artificial quarantine of the Big Brother programme is mixed with these stories, and with others such as the journalistic narration of disasters such as the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. All of them have nurtured our social imaginary and have foreshadowed our experience of the current pandemic.

The COVID-19 crisis thus materialises in paradoxical spatial and temporal forms. Forms that make daily proximity a danger, that isolate us from our immediate physical environment to reinforce our connection with global information and communication networks. Forms whose time horizon is uncertain, that blur the limits of working time and that are simultaneously new and already lived in our experience of cultural consumption. Beyond its material and immediate consequences, the pandemic certifies the consolidation of a spatio-temporal regime where the possibility of being completely safe simply ceased to exist.

Politique de la survie