Subjective consequences of the pandemic
Clara Schor Landman[1]
I.
We are part of a strange viral phenomenon on a planetary level, of which we have no precedent, how it came, how it goes, how to survive.
We know very little. What we do know is that it's spreading rapidly; we—human beings—carry it from one place to another, and it's multiplying exponentially.
Experience highlights the need for social bonds; individualism leaves us entangled. Group dynamics, social interaction, cooperation, and public policies on health, housing, education, and the environment—all these resources are essential.
It is imperative to consider how a cultural change would be possible: replacing the destructive criteria of capitalism with criteria of social policies.
Something about the logic of capitalism collapsed, and it wasn't because of the economy. Nature, biology, unleashed its destructive side on humankind. Was it a surprise or predictable?
Just as capitalism established the premise "everything is possible," "everything is permitted," at this moment the coronavirus demands regulations, deprivations, limits, changes in the ways of living of each individual, as well as of social groups, and sociocultural controls.
The danger is contagion on a geometric scale, the risk is death.
Day by day, the invisible disease spreads, and beliefs about its causes change, as does the possibility of curing it. We are in a state of caution and waiting.
Somehow, unexpectedly, the coronavirus descended upon humanity, shocking countries, leading to restrictive measures and daily closures. Cultural, sporting, and social programs, travel, work, empty streets, bars, universities, and schools were all shut down.
The need for people not to gather together, to be separated, in quarantine, as a resource for reducing the spread of the disease.
It is clear that, just as the State is responsible for public policies as responses to citizens' rights, so too is each citizen responsible. It is a shared responsibility; otherwise, there is no way out, which highlights the social, ethical, and solidarity-based values of social coexistence.
This is what capitalism cares little about, only the consumer in the market, but the coronavirus shakes this formula, the economy of countries, it calls into question individualism and the consumer as the only perspective.
II.
On a subjective level, we are experiencing moments of suffering, a malaise within capitalist culture: the overwhelming power of nature, the fragility of our bodies, and the inadequacy of norms to regulate our relationships. Our customs are being transformed—a nightmarish effect, a disorienting blow. How can we understand it? What can we do?
Experience of the Real, of the traumatic, that is, being traversed by the impossibility of knowing, of doing, of enduring uncertainty.
Are symbolic resources insufficient to situate us in the globalized reality we live in?
Humanity's self-esteem is wounded as in other times, as Freud explains.
Copernicus's discovery in the 14th century ended the illusion of humankind that believed the master of the world.
Darwin's theory puts a limit on humankind's belief in its own existence. superiority regarding animals.
For the problem at hand, the human belief that it is sovereign in his own soulThe belief in the omnipotence of one's consciousness, in the power of one's self.
However, thanks to Freud we know that the ego is not master in its own house insofar as it is unaware of a part of itself, the unconscious.
From this point of view, we can argue that the coronavirus is an organic disease in itself, but at the same time it is an affront to the subject with the belief of being master of the world, of superiority, of being sovereign in his own house.
In other words, we are in the realm of not knowing, of uncertainty, knowing that we do not know, and the question remains about what comes next, which may be accompanied by fear and anguish, but fundamentally it is time to consider the limits of hatred, privileged methods for breaking ties and fostering individualism.
III.
Knowing that, as a subject, I am neither master, nor superior, nor sovereign, then what? Then, a divided subject in a state of subjective and social urgency, a time of trauma. Deprived of possible responses suited to my circumstances that might alleviate my suffering.
We are interested in the trauma experienced by the individual as a result of a collective catastrophe (the coronavirus pandemic): helplessness, fragility of relationships, lack of institutional protection, loss of citizenship, and processes of segregation. The individual is traumatized insofar as they find themselves entangled in impossibilities, undecidables, and uncertainties.
In this sense, trauma occurs in the subject when something familiar becomes strange in the contingent encounter with an external event, where social, cultural, political and economic conditions become relevant.
We are interested in something that is particular to each individual: what was it for the subject that erupted in the form of surprise, the unsettling, the enigmatic within their possible, decidable, certain, and sensible coordinates?
The question presupposes a human being, a speaking being, an immeasurable and irreplaceable subject as such.
When we say subject we are referring to a subject that does not exist without the social.
The subject we are referring to does not have unity (divided) and is discontinuity (between stimulus-response), it has the unconscious.
In conclusion, the unprecedented experience we are currently living through is characterized by its contingency. It cannot yet be universalized, standardized, or programmed. Many voices attempt to explain the inexplicable, offering reassuring arguments that operate as a falsehood-true dichotomy.
Getting out of the impasse we find ourselves in is undoubtedly a matter of political interests and decisions, but it is also an ethical issue, considering the human condition: not backing down in the face of anguish, contingencies, and the suffering of the individual.
Finally, if possible, reinvent social constructions of new narratives applicable to a better life.
March of 2020.
[1] Co-coordinator of the CLACSO Working Group on Social Studies for Health. Joint coordination with Carolina Tetelboin and Daisy Iturrieta. Professor at UNDAV, Argentina.
[+] Thinking about the pandemic
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