Aesthetic Separation / Separation Aesthetics: The Pandemic and the Event Spaces of Precarity
Abstract
The consensual and dissensual modes of separation above alert us to how the COVID-19 pandemic has turned the present into a time of intense separation, one of which is between those bodies marked as essential versus non-essential, those that have ‘pre-existing conditions’ and those without, and those located in precarious zones of abandonment, congestion, and containment, and those that, owing to prevailing economic distancing and apartness, can practice a life of social distancing. Not only does this highlight how some lives and livelihoods are deemed essential yet disposable, we also come to see which forms of loss or even death are considered grievable and which ones are subjected to the sacrificial calculus and discourses of necessity. Noting the dynamics associated with that emerging division, while at the same time reviewing a series of texts featuring aesthetic separations, our essay proceeds through a series of ‘ante-metabolic spins’ that invite ‘us’ to think critically about the political implications of aesthetic separations and separation aesthetics.
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