“I am supposed to be writing this essay, ostensibly on technology, but not for the first time, I believe I am unable to write; and not writing, doubt that I will I ever write again.”
Tag: COVID-19
Criminalized Borders and US Health-Care Profits
The pandemic took the health inequalities generated by US imperialism, and made them worse.
What Happens When a Metaphor Becomes Real?
The humanities can reveal the truth of the world’s crises, everything from contagions like the pandemic to apocalypses like right-wing violence.
Like Sands through the Hourglass
What will our children remember of this time, when their play and freedom are confined—or freed—by the digital?
What Was the Classroom?
As many COVID-era courses have moved from seminar rooms to Zoom meetings, the haptic nature of teaching has changed. Is anything lost?
A Labyrinth for Our Time
What might the dynamic of mental life look like when its physiological counterpart is ill, bedridden, and housebound?
Mother of a Pandemic
If there is a way forward for the “pandemic novel,” it may be in Emma Donoghue’s claustrophobic settings of motherhood and childbirth.
Think like a Virus
Rather than accepting that a virus will come, we can learn how viruses live and thrive—and work to suppress them before they take off.
Pandemic Syllabus
Disease has never been merely a biological phenomenon. Instead, all illnesses—including COVID-19—are social problems for humans to solve.
Shoptalk: Overheard at the Virtual Conference
In this parodic installment of Shoptalk, we salute the year of conferences that have tried to be.
Rebuilding Solidarity in a Broken World
We can begin where we live, because our neighbors and neighborhoods shape us in ways that are invisible but invigorating.
Global Inequality and the Corona Shock
COVID-19 is the first truly comprehensive crisis of the Anthropocene era, affecting virtually everyone on the planet.
The World Is a Factory Farm
If factory farming is the source of pathogens like SARS-CoV-2, could smaller-scale farms and communities—even in China—be the safest alternative?
Picturing the Lost
In segregated neighborhoods throughout New York, memorials to those claimed by COVID-19 have appeared and evolved.
Covid Blindness
Withholding accurate information obscures both the impact of the pandemic on the most vulnerable and the resurgence of institutional violence.
Are We in Denial about Denial?
Across the political spectrum, people deny how bad the state of the world is. No wonder the far right’s lies have such purchase.
Emergency Urbanism
Housing-justice movements ask: How can unhoused people be considered trespassers on state-owned land?
Fast Food, Precarious Workers
Today—as in 1968—it remains to be seen if McDonald’s pivot toward racial justice will mean anything for how it treats its scores of Black workers.
To Heal the Body, Heal the Body Politic
Before 2020, the relationship that is the body was already ailing. COVID-19 heightens the need to heal it.
The Vulnerable Foundations of India’s Urbanism
In Delhi—a city of 17 million people—7.2 million residents already qualified for food aid before the pandemic. After, the numbers skyrocketed.