I would like to express my slightly dissonant responses to the current period.
Everybody understands the need to take certain measures in order to slow the spread of Covid-19. The point here, of course, is not to call into question that principle. But passions and collective fantasies are always invested in such social mechanisms. The battle against the epidemic and the politics of confinement are bringing about a resurgence of particularly problematic impulses. Affects take hold of almost all of us without us knowing it: they structure our way of understanding the present and impose on us a stifling atmosphere. Today, we have to be watchful of ourselves, if we don't want the values that structure our connection to the pandemic to give birth to a lastingly suffocated world.
We must first distrust ourselves about a certain kind of adherence to “suffering.”
Many are indignant when they look out of their windows and see people walking, cycling, or jogging for hours on end. Numerous voices are calling out to demand a total confinement, or even a curfew. The mandate to stay at home [“rester chez soi”] and the necessity of social distancing provide the pretext to reinforce the urge in us to exert control over one another. But above all, holding these positions illustrates a tendency not to understand the battle against the disease in rational terms (we must ask ourselves why the fact that certain people walk for some kilometers, or even all night if they wish, should pose any problem at all). We descend into a kind of ritual of atonement, a ceremony of suffering, in which each must play their obligatory role, according to some sacrificial logic. It is almost as if we stoke magical and primitive patterns of thought: collective suffering, like a ceremony of redemption, would assure us a quick recovery. Such calls are often formulated by invoking the suffering of doctors: “people are dying, the doctors are overwhelmed, stay in your home [“restez chez vous”].” As if, because doctors and nurses are suffering, it means that everybody should suffer, and suffer as much as possible, even if it’s useless. The critique addressed at those who retreat to their second home, or are living out their social distancing confinement more in the spirit of a vacation, reveals the same tendency.
