爆料王

By Killian Quigley, Postdoctoral Fellow, Sydney Environment Institute

Along the paths of the pandemic, life-worlds have undergone鈥攁nd are undergoing鈥攄ramatic, diverse, unequal, and asynchronous change. Language furnishes some vivid examples. Earlier this month, Bernadette Paton, Executive Editor of the聽Oxford English Dictionary,听聽the ways COVID-19 has created and repurposed a vocabulary of its own. Learning the histories of terms like 鈥渟elf-isolating鈥濃�攁n epithet, originally, for聽苍补迟颈辞苍蝉听practising political and economic isolationism鈥攈as me asking how my lexical practices have been shifting. Furthermore, I鈥檓 wondering what their shifting has been聽doing聽to my sense of self, my relationship to work, my experience of community, and my ability to imagine what lies ahead.

When we talk about the coronavirus, we talk about time鈥攁bout how long it鈥檚 been since we saw a good friend, perhaps, or for how many weeks we鈥檝e been attempting to simultaneously home-school children and 鈥渨ork from home鈥�. Official discourses talk time too, such as when they forecast the moment the disease is due to 鈥減eak鈥� in a particular spot, or when they speculate about reductions and extensions in social distancing restrictions. And just as it matters how I describe and understand how I鈥檓 doing in the context of this crisis, it matters how public speech鈥攅specially the authoritative kind鈥攕elects and conveys the words, images, and narratives that frame conversation, and even frame thought.

Take, for example, 鈥�,鈥� 鈥�,鈥� and 鈥�,鈥� three very different metaphors all in pursuit of something like the same goal. Their respective utterers鈥擥overnor Andrew Cuomo of New York, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S谩nchez, and Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg鈥攈ave chosen bits of language that (are supposed to) render policy response, and the pandemic writ large, comprehensible for their constituencies and broader audiences. More specifically, these metaphors express faith in the state鈥檚 ability to fix the boundaries of the emergency in time. So doing, they seek to聽produce聽that faith in the persons who hear and read them, and who may go on to incorporate them, consciously or otherwise, into their own sense of what is going on.

These are basic functions, and they鈥檙e critical ones: as the linguist Wolfgang Klein has written, in order for 鈥渨ell-coordinated collective action鈥濃�攕uch as the operations of human society鈥攖o take place, it鈥檚 necessary that the members of a community have reliable practices of sharing and co-creating 鈥渢emporal information鈥� when they communicate with one another.¹聽In the present instance, the better and worse functioning of such practices have enabled individuals and societies to inhabit the period of the pandemic more and less effectively. Just yesterday, my friend and I video-chatted about what we were looking forward to doing, and where we were looking forward to going,听after聽the pandemic. By writing our stories into the future, past the time of the virus, we enjoyed an interval of welcome emotional and psychological relief.

Still, more needs knowing about the temporal metaphorics of this pandemic, particularly as they issue from administrative and political discourses. The words I mentioned earlier do more than characterise life under the coronavirus and seize its past, present, and future bounds. They imply a capacity to put time itself on some kind of hold鈥攐r to momentarily dislocate whole societies from one mode of temporality to another. And they suggest that something like normal time exists; that we are now taking an enforced (but elegantly managed) time out; and that normal time will recommence at an interval of authority鈥檚 organising, if not exactly choosing.

What relationships鈥攖o the past, the present, and the future鈥攄oes this framing encourage or enable? What relationships does it obscure or disallow? 鈥淧ause,鈥� 鈥渉ibernation,鈥� and 鈥渃ryogenic suspension,鈥� and metaphors like them, describe states of atemporality, of being removed from time, or of time having been arrested in its flow. But of course we know that聽飞丑颈濒别听certain times are instructed to play dead, other times surge on in the progressive tense: in the United States, the Trump administration is聽聽fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles. Off the coast of Queensland, the Great Barrier Reef聽along the entirety of its length. Yes, the pandemic鈥檚 impact on industrial activity聽聽earth鈥檚 atmosphere a short-term diminishment in air pollution. But global warming is not quarantining, and neither are the political, economic, and cultural structures that bear outsized responsibility for it.

For that matter, to what sort of鈥攁nd to聽whose鈥攏ormality is life directed to return? As the futurology²聽of coronavirus response weaves tales of a resurgent status quo, it is incumbent upon us all to contemplate what persons, communities, and systems would be well-served by such resumption, and which would be 鈥済oing back鈥� to suffering as bad, or worse, than 鈥渂efore.鈥� In a recent article on temporality, embodiment, and racialisation, Helen Ngo makes the pertinent argument that different bodies are afforded different abilities to orient themselves in mainstream time鈥攁nd that 鈥渨hite embodiment is not only futurally oriented, but also free to take up the present and past as it wishes, and in the manner of its own choosing鈥�.^3听Thinking with Ngo鈥檚 work, I want to know what oppressive legacies are inscribed within the temporal metaphorics of the coronavirus, and of other official futurologies besides.

This is not a pause. There will be no 鈥済oing back鈥�. So聽聽Arundhati Roy, for whom the pandemic is an historical 鈥渞upture,鈥� not a temporary break from business as usual. It is, moreover, 鈥渁 portal, a gateway between one world and the next鈥�. To say as much is to acknowledge that together, we share the strange fact of being with the virus in our places and times, footings that might afford unanticipated poetic and political horizons. Taking rigorous heed of language heard, made, and shared聽is part聽of the ongoingness of ethical care within the several emergencies that unevenly house us. This has been true, will be, and is now.


This article is part of our聽Corona and Climate Series, an ongoing collection of opinion pieces from leading experts in the SEI community. In a time of intersecting planetary crises, this series analyses the parallels between ecological and epidemiological crisis, focussing on questions of resilience, adaptation and justice on local and global scales.

Killian Quigley聽is a postdoctoral researcher at the Sydney Environment Institute. He is co-editor of聽The Aesthetics of the Undersea, author of articles on聽plastic,听marine pastoral, and other subjects, and was聽researcher in residence, recently, with Works on Water/Underwater New York.

Header image:聽by Benjam铆n Gremler via Unsplash.