Lectures

January 31, 2022

Viral Waste, or Covid Down the Toilet: Post-Colonic Pandemic Biopolitics

This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic

Within days of discovering SARS-CoV-2, laboratory scientists and epidemiologists were speculating on whether the virus might take fecal passage, and thereby spread through contamination with bodily waste. But the fecal-oral route of transmission quickly proved a dead end, an etiological cul-de-sac. The pressure to inquire into shit, however, is always difficult to resist. Before long, experts in wastewater …

Lectures

July 29, 2021

The Social Potential of Continuing to Wear Masks

By Christos Lynteris

This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic

We are often told that anti-epidemic masks should not be politicised. Though often well intentioned, this admonition falls short of taking masks seriously as social and historical objects. For, in assuming these to be inherently neutral prophylactic devices whose politicisation is simply an epiphenomenon, this narrative fails to understand and acknowledge that the historical institution of anti-epidemic masks has been …

Lectures

May 25, 2021

Long Covid, chronic fatigue syndrome and women: the shadow of hysteria

By Ilana Löwy

This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic

Is long Covid disseminated by newspapers?

On April 14^th, 2021, the British journalist and writer George Monbiot published an article entitled “Apparently just by talking about it, I’m super-spreading long Covid.” (Monbiot, 2021). Monbiot had learned that during a recent public presentation Michael Sharpe, professor of psychology at Oxford University and founder of a clinic specialized in the …

Lectures

May 18, 2021

Caring for home: The failures of vaccine nationalism, or, Why the pandemic will not be over soon

By Luisa Madrigal

This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic

Para español aquí.

It was one of those early spring evenings where the sun was warm and the air fresh. My friends and I were at the park, in what has become a pandemic ritual. Seeing people of all ages running, reading, talking, walking their pets, and enjoying themselves while we also traded the confines of our small apartments for …

Lectures

May 13, 2021

Tackling the pandemic: examining the role of social movements and organizations in Argentina

By Silvia Hirsch and Andrea Mastrangelo

This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic

Introduction

Mónica, a 44-year-old woman, wakes up every morning thinking about the challenges ahead. Today, like every other day, she will prepare soup with noodles and rice for more than140 neighbors who attend her soup kitchen in an economically marginalized neighborhood in the outskirts of the city of Resistencia in Argentina. Three years ago, when this neighborhood flooded and many …

Lectures

May 11, 2021

Visions of Black Futurity Amidst the Double Pandemic of COVID-19 and Police Brutality

By Nadia Mbonde

This article is part of the series: Dispatches from the pandemic

When I ask Willow, an Afro-Puerto Rican young woman in her 20s, if quarantine has helped reduce the stigma of mental illness, she responds:

I think it will because now we have something to compare it to. When we’re talking about having a hard time or feelings of not being able to escape ourselves, we can say, “Well, how was

…

Somatosphere

Science, Medicine, and Anthropology

A collaborative website covering the intersections of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, cultural psychiatry, psychology and bioethics.

Series: Dispatches from the pandemic

Viral Waste, or Covid Down the Toilet: Post-Colonic Pandemic Biopolitics

The Social Potential of Continuing to Wear Masks

Long Covid, chronic fatigue syndrome and women: the shadow of hysteria

Caring for home: The failures of vaccine nationalism, or, Why the pandemic will not be over soon

Visions of Black Futurity Amidst the Double Pandemic of COVID-19 and Police Brutality