This IGAF (Is Goodness a Fashion) series explores, from a non-expert point of view, the social, economic and narrative ramifications I see developing from the COVID-19 crisis, worries, but also hopes for a future that the current shock to the system may result in.
It's a pity that random things happen when random people interact. That a person might be exposed to unexpected, or unpleasant sights when they leave the house. That we might see trash, homeless people, the effects of gentrification, closed stores in polluted streets, trees withered by mercurial weather, people in environmental suits, afraid of the diseases lurking within the safe confines of those suits. The world divided into those who have to face the streets, the Outside, and those who are safe Inside. It's a pity that these still interact.
Our measure as a species that claims moral, ethical and intellectual hegemony over this planet will be two-fold as we deal with the COVID-19 crisis: On the one hand, societies will be judged on their effectiveness and humanistic approach in dealing with the crisis itself- in legal, health care and democratic terms. The second hand is raised up to query impertinently: what will be left of our societies once this initial, streched moment of crisis is over?
There are many questions that a society that is suddenly confined indoors and traumatised by a sudden global threat and the response to it poses. While superficially not as violent as a war against a clear opponent, an "enemy" that is invisible and who presents an omnipresent threat, the trauma of losing your loved ones to it, and the continued worry that you, or people you are close too, may be thus afflicted. People on the street are suddenly perceived as dangerous entities to be avoided. Workers behind glass panes in are reduced to the utility and use they represent to commercial activity- and they're explicitly asking not to be interacted with beyond hello. Masks in public spaces everywhere, individuals reduced to a faceless mass, facial features defined mainly by the cloth used in the sowing of mostly home-made masks. Some of the masks are pretty. I miss the faces already.
Already, we see some regimes- Hungary, for starters- use the threat of COVID as an excuse to impose an even more authoritarian and repressive government than they had before. Egypts "narrative purity" laws were used to expel a Guardian correspondent for reporting a projection of cases in the country, rather than the official number- which is, of course, far lower than the projections. Will they also be used to suppress doctors trying to counter the Sisi regimes narrative with facts from the ground? In Berlin, a number of fines were recently introduced to temporarily regulate the proximity at which people interact with each other in public space, introducing a conflict between legality and basic human instinct for proximity. However, German authorities and privacy activists are asking very careful questions about the privacy implications of tracking COVID patients through mobile phone data and apps, while in Russia, an app that reportedly will be able to access any and all private data on a smartphone will be launched this week. In the US, abortion clinics are being closed as they are "non-essential" in this time of crisis.*
In Greece, refugee squats and political projects continue to be evicted in spite of a general lockdown, while back in Hamburg the Lampedusa Memorial Squat was torn down due to its lack of occupation, in spite of prior agreements with the authorities. In several countries, we see images of policemen beating up people for being outdoors during lockdowns, which cannot be good for an immune system trying to fend off a pandemic. In Tunis, police robots are being used to send people back indoors, a funny sight at first, but it's only a few steps from there to replacing beat cops with robots entirely, with all the perceptional and ethical ramifications that has. In China, drones are used.
All of this to say that the current crisis is being used to issue legislation and deploy measures appropriate to a crisis, and that a general global public is currently supportive of measures which may currently be necessary, but again, we have to ask: how long is "temporary". In Egypt, a state of emergency law was one of the grievances of demonstrators in the 2011 uprising, due to it being upheld for the better part of 30 years under Hosni Mubarak, used to stifle political and economic participation and to enact a skewed system of law favouring the monied and connected- reasons were always found to extend what was supposed to be a "temporary" state, to the detriment of most in the country.
In a time of narrative hyperreality, in which our perception of the facts is as dependent on the news we follow as it is on whom we interact with, locked in with very little but our filter bubbles and what permeates those, with insecurity about the future looming for many in many countries, there is much the individual will not see. For instance: every time I've passed by Kotbusser Tor in the past two weeks, the congregation of homeless people hanging out there has increased. With no-where to shelter safely, and no-one around to throw away bottles from which they might collect the deposit, you might call them the ultimate tip workers- they live off that, and what little social support they may receive. There are institutions trying to help them, but they are currently understaffed and lack the resources to shelter- isolate- them as the crisis demands they be. They will be amongst the hardest hit by the above-mentioned fines, are not likely to receive any of the aid afforded to freelancers or other employed people affected by this crisis- not being part of "the Economy"- and are amongst the most vulnerable groups to infection by COVID-19. Mainstream media will not advocate for them and, with most people at home, they will not be seen. I maintain that, if everything is currently being subsidised, empty hotels and AirbnB flats should be thusly subsidised to host them, at least for the duration of this crisis, in keeping with the humanist principles governments claim to be operating by.
Even more removed from view are victims of forced migration, stuck between borders. What happens when a refugee camp- Moria, for instance- starts exponentiating Corona cases? Who offers them relief? Or are they simply forgotten as most people- us lucky few- try to make sense of this new and strange reality we find ourselves in?
Further removed from current view is the wave of uprisings that was ongoing in a number of countries all over this globe in the months prior to the COVID outbreak. Prior to March 2020, we were witness to one of the biggest global uprising of working and disenfrachised people in a long time- where did all those protesters in France, Chile, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan and many other countries disappear to? Their situation will not be improved by the echoes of the current crisis. With all attention focused on Corona and resisting this global threat, they have been relegated to the footnotes of what is important.
We cannot allow ourselves to forget our most recent history, even if faced with what is possibly the first global pandemic. Even restricted in our movements and locked in what feels like an endless series of Zoom conferences, we cannot overlook the results of decades of inaction, or recent interventions. It is impossible to overlook the decades in which a neoliberal economic system has slowly hollowed out institutions and countries for the sake of mere financial gain, nor the pain this has afflicted on the population of the planet as a whole. If this is, as has been mentioned, the next level of the 2008 housing bubble, we should be very aware of the effects it has on our societies and economies.
The housing bubble of 2008 brought many of the deficiencies of the economic and financial systems we operate under to the forefront and caused people to eventually take to the streets to protest the injustices they perceived. This time, the streets have been made unavailable, public spaces restricted, under quarantine. Many are locked in their flats, too frightened to question, or even explore the official narratives presented. Again, I will stress that the current crisis in nothing to be dismissed as a case of the common flu, and that everyone needs to be careful and wash their hands.
I will also stress that there are things that you cannot wash your hands of. And that, at this time, cynicism aside, there were and remain many things going on in the world that are inconvenient to a master narrative which are easily forgotten once lost from sight. The central question I want to ask here remains: once we have undergone all the changes brought about through this, the newest, crisis, how much will be left from where we started out from? And how much of what is left will we be able to see in lives that consist of a lot of Indoors?
Part V of the current IGAF: Money, Politics and People- Distributing Profit a bit more fairly
Part IV of the current IGAF: Dystopia
Part III of the current IGAF: Keeping a shop open
Part II of the current IGAF: How are we going to pay for THAT?
Part I of the current IGAF: Keeping in Touch
* amongst many, many other things in these and other countries. I follow a lot of news, but even in self-isolation, and with insomnia, I don't catch it all. Palestine.
It's a pity that random things happen when random people interact. That a person might be exposed to unexpected, or unpleasant sights when they leave the house. That we might see trash, homeless people, the effects of gentrification, closed stores in polluted streets, trees withered by mercurial weather, people in environmental suits, afraid of the diseases lurking within the safe confines of those suits. The world divided into those who have to face the streets, the Outside, and those who are safe Inside. It's a pity that these still interact.
Our measure as a species that claims moral, ethical and intellectual hegemony over this planet will be two-fold as we deal with the COVID-19 crisis: On the one hand, societies will be judged on their effectiveness and humanistic approach in dealing with the crisis itself- in legal, health care and democratic terms. The second hand is raised up to query impertinently: what will be left of our societies once this initial, streched moment of crisis is over?
There are many questions that a society that is suddenly confined indoors and traumatised by a sudden global threat and the response to it poses. While superficially not as violent as a war against a clear opponent, an "enemy" that is invisible and who presents an omnipresent threat, the trauma of losing your loved ones to it, and the continued worry that you, or people you are close too, may be thus afflicted. People on the street are suddenly perceived as dangerous entities to be avoided. Workers behind glass panes in are reduced to the utility and use they represent to commercial activity- and they're explicitly asking not to be interacted with beyond hello. Masks in public spaces everywhere, individuals reduced to a faceless mass, facial features defined mainly by the cloth used in the sowing of mostly home-made masks. Some of the masks are pretty. I miss the faces already.
Already, we see some regimes- Hungary, for starters- use the threat of COVID as an excuse to impose an even more authoritarian and repressive government than they had before. Egypts "narrative purity" laws were used to expel a Guardian correspondent for reporting a projection of cases in the country, rather than the official number- which is, of course, far lower than the projections. Will they also be used to suppress doctors trying to counter the Sisi regimes narrative with facts from the ground? In Berlin, a number of fines were recently introduced to temporarily regulate the proximity at which people interact with each other in public space, introducing a conflict between legality and basic human instinct for proximity. However, German authorities and privacy activists are asking very careful questions about the privacy implications of tracking COVID patients through mobile phone data and apps, while in Russia, an app that reportedly will be able to access any and all private data on a smartphone will be launched this week. In the US, abortion clinics are being closed as they are "non-essential" in this time of crisis.*
In Greece, refugee squats and political projects continue to be evicted in spite of a general lockdown, while back in Hamburg the Lampedusa Memorial Squat was torn down due to its lack of occupation, in spite of prior agreements with the authorities. In several countries, we see images of policemen beating up people for being outdoors during lockdowns, which cannot be good for an immune system trying to fend off a pandemic. In Tunis, police robots are being used to send people back indoors, a funny sight at first, but it's only a few steps from there to replacing beat cops with robots entirely, with all the perceptional and ethical ramifications that has. In China, drones are used.
All of this to say that the current crisis is being used to issue legislation and deploy measures appropriate to a crisis, and that a general global public is currently supportive of measures which may currently be necessary, but again, we have to ask: how long is "temporary". In Egypt, a state of emergency law was one of the grievances of demonstrators in the 2011 uprising, due to it being upheld for the better part of 30 years under Hosni Mubarak, used to stifle political and economic participation and to enact a skewed system of law favouring the monied and connected- reasons were always found to extend what was supposed to be a "temporary" state, to the detriment of most in the country.
In a time of narrative hyperreality, in which our perception of the facts is as dependent on the news we follow as it is on whom we interact with, locked in with very little but our filter bubbles and what permeates those, with insecurity about the future looming for many in many countries, there is much the individual will not see. For instance: every time I've passed by Kotbusser Tor in the past two weeks, the congregation of homeless people hanging out there has increased. With no-where to shelter safely, and no-one around to throw away bottles from which they might collect the deposit, you might call them the ultimate tip workers- they live off that, and what little social support they may receive. There are institutions trying to help them, but they are currently understaffed and lack the resources to shelter- isolate- them as the crisis demands they be. They will be amongst the hardest hit by the above-mentioned fines, are not likely to receive any of the aid afforded to freelancers or other employed people affected by this crisis- not being part of "the Economy"- and are amongst the most vulnerable groups to infection by COVID-19. Mainstream media will not advocate for them and, with most people at home, they will not be seen. I maintain that, if everything is currently being subsidised, empty hotels and AirbnB flats should be thusly subsidised to host them, at least for the duration of this crisis, in keeping with the humanist principles governments claim to be operating by.
Even more removed from view are victims of forced migration, stuck between borders. What happens when a refugee camp- Moria, for instance- starts exponentiating Corona cases? Who offers them relief? Or are they simply forgotten as most people- us lucky few- try to make sense of this new and strange reality we find ourselves in?
Further removed from current view is the wave of uprisings that was ongoing in a number of countries all over this globe in the months prior to the COVID outbreak. Prior to March 2020, we were witness to one of the biggest global uprising of working and disenfrachised people in a long time- where did all those protesters in France, Chile, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan and many other countries disappear to? Their situation will not be improved by the echoes of the current crisis. With all attention focused on Corona and resisting this global threat, they have been relegated to the footnotes of what is important.
We cannot allow ourselves to forget our most recent history, even if faced with what is possibly the first global pandemic. Even restricted in our movements and locked in what feels like an endless series of Zoom conferences, we cannot overlook the results of decades of inaction, or recent interventions. It is impossible to overlook the decades in which a neoliberal economic system has slowly hollowed out institutions and countries for the sake of mere financial gain, nor the pain this has afflicted on the population of the planet as a whole. If this is, as has been mentioned, the next level of the 2008 housing bubble, we should be very aware of the effects it has on our societies and economies.
The housing bubble of 2008 brought many of the deficiencies of the economic and financial systems we operate under to the forefront and caused people to eventually take to the streets to protest the injustices they perceived. This time, the streets have been made unavailable, public spaces restricted, under quarantine. Many are locked in their flats, too frightened to question, or even explore the official narratives presented. Again, I will stress that the current crisis in nothing to be dismissed as a case of the common flu, and that everyone needs to be careful and wash their hands.
I will also stress that there are things that you cannot wash your hands of. And that, at this time, cynicism aside, there were and remain many things going on in the world that are inconvenient to a master narrative which are easily forgotten once lost from sight. The central question I want to ask here remains: once we have undergone all the changes brought about through this, the newest, crisis, how much will be left from where we started out from? And how much of what is left will we be able to see in lives that consist of a lot of Indoors?
Part V of the current IGAF: Money, Politics and People- Distributing Profit a bit more fairly
Part IV of the current IGAF: Dystopia
Part III of the current IGAF: Keeping a shop open
Part II of the current IGAF: How are we going to pay for THAT?
Part I of the current IGAF: Keeping in Touch
* amongst many, many other things in these and other countries. I follow a lot of news, but even in self-isolation, and with insomnia, I don't catch it all. Palestine.
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