Here you will find writing about COVID-19, the uprisings against police murders, and the rapidly-changing political situation. We’re trying to contain our urge to add to the overloaded bandwagon of “hot takes.” We thought maybe people might like to read something that tries not to center one singular consciousness. And we’ve made an effort to address what’s happening on the level of everyday life, the ephemeral experiences from which any effort to theorize the history of the present has to emerge.
Society for Sick Societies is a diagnostic project. Built as a series of episodes, each one of its vignettes sets out to analyze an expressed symptom of a sick society–a practice, pattern, gesture, proverb, or technique that seems to encapsulate … Continue reading “Society for Sick Societies: The Breathing Machine”
Society for Sick Societies is a diagnostic project. Built as a series of episodes, each one of its vignettes sets out to analyze an expressed symptom of a sick society–a practice, pattern, gesture, proverb, or technique that seems to encapsulate … Continue reading “Society for Sick Societies: Hold Your Breath”
Society for Sick Societies is a diagnostic project. Built as a series of episodes, each one of its vignettes sets out to analyze an expressed symptom of a sick society–a practice, pattern, gesture, proverb, or technique that seems to encapsulate … Continue reading “Society for Sick Societies: Brazil’s Necropolitical Melodrama”
At the beginning of the crisis, we decided we wanted to create records of daily life and its ephemera. The following selection of entries documents the indoor crisis of March into mid-May in the merged and anonymized diaries of three … Continue reading “COVID Diary”
We opened our exchange at the beginning of May–almost two months after New York has issued a shelter in place order. We end just before the 4th of July (or “the 4th you lie” as it’s known in some Black … Continue reading “Letters”
Society for Sick Societies is a diagnostic project. Built as a series of episodes, each one of its vignettes sets out to analyze an expressed symptom of a sick society–a practice, pattern, gesture, proverb, or technique that seems to encapsulate … Continue reading “Society for Sick Societies: Domestic Inspectors”
Every day for the past two years, I have heard horses ride down the road outside my flat. There are always two of them, and they always take the same route, down the hill and round the corner before their … Continue reading “Horses and History”
What does the politics of gratitude do in our shared public health crisis? In almost all nation-states, essential workers are heroized and appreciated on numerous social media platforms. These campaigns produce particular affect in our traumatic times, and when we … Continue reading “Vampiric Affect: The Afterlife of a Metaphor in a Global Pandemic”
The murder of George Floyd at the height of a global pandemic has provided anti-racist rhetoric with an unexpected but virulent new metaphor. A lawyer for George Floyd said that a pandemic of racism killed his client. The president of … Continue reading “Mythology Today Today”
Society for Sick Societies is a diagnostic project. Built as a series of episodes, each one of its vignettes sets out to analyze an expressed symptom of a sick society–a practice, pattern, gesture, proverb, or technique that seems to encapsulate … Continue reading “Society for Sick Societies: The Tiny Hands of the Market”
In Central America under Covid-19, specifically in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, white flags have appeared all over the social terrain as indictments of a failed political and economic system whose primary effect for common people has been enduring a … Continue reading “On Waving the White Flag”
Society for Sick Societies is a diagnostic project. Built as a series of episodes, each one of its vignettes sets out to analyze an expressed symptom of a sick society–a practice, pattern, gesture, proverb, or technique that seems to encapsulate … Continue reading “Society for Sick Societies: Between Pandemia and Pandemonium”
Society for Sick Societies is a diagnostic project. Built as a series of episodes, each one of its vignettes sets out to analyze an expressed symptom of a sick society–a practice, pattern, gesture, proverb, or technique that seems to encapsulate … Continue reading “Society for Sick Societies: Media Itineraries”
The adage “this too shall pass” is perhaps a source of hope in living through the current COVID-19 crisis. But, when the conventional notion of safety is put into question and when precarity is distributed unevenly across different “safe spaces,” … Continue reading “Home Sweet Home: Everyday Precarity in Lockdown”
In the time of COVID, I do a lot of laundry. At first it was because I was finally still; no longer traveling so there was more time and a backlog of dirty clothes. Then, it was for other reasons. … Continue reading “Sweat”
