The state therefore can and does intervene (Perrons/Plomien 2010) in moderating the contradiction between the productive and reproductive spheres and the process of exploiting and renewing labour power, although such interventions are not pre-determined. How the capitalist state approaches the crisis tendencies of capitalist societies varies historically, depending on the specific regime of accumulation (Fraser 2016). For example, accumulation by dispossession as a strategy to overcome the crisis of Fordist accumulation (Harvey 2004) restricts the conditions for the social reproduction of households and communities which rely on means of subsistence such as land or water. The privatization and commodification of social provisioning implies 'deepened social cleavages and lop-sided economic structures' (Razavi/Hassim 2006: 7) based on the legacy of colonial asymmetries and power relations. In different contexts and periods, the state can prioritize redistributive, egalitarian projects and policies, and stabilize the contradiction between economic production and social reproduction; or it can limit redistribution and drive the widening of inequalities through privileging the interests of capital, thereby weakening the conditions for social reproduction. The state is thus crucially important through its regulatory and resourcing functions across all the spheres involved in social reproduction, for instance: in the market, concerning access to and conditions of waged employment; in the public domain, concerning provisioning through social and care infrastructure; and in the domestic sphere, concerning reproduction, care, and housework.

Over the last several decades, global neoliberal restructuring processes have transformed the interrelated spheres of production and reproduction. Although important differences in the various contexts remain, similarities of trends can be noted (Razavi/Hassim 2006). The first relevant change is the informalization and casualization of employment accompanied by increased labour market participation of women, reflected in the double meaning of feminization of labour (Standing 1999; Scheele 2004). The second involves the social sector and its provision of services and benefits. This has been subject to spending cuts, commodification, and privatization, leaving many segments of the population unable to access adequate provision, while some elements of social protection and social provision, like healthcare or pensions, are available only to those who can afford them (Razavi/Hassim 2006). These two broad labour market and public sector processes interact with the third set of changes taking place in the domestic sphere. The time and wage implications of the necessity of all (adult) household members to take on (precarious) paid employment and the residual or targeted character of public goods that substitute elements of social reproductive labour indicate that the household capacity for social reproduction has diminished, while the need for it has increased. Consequently, the contradiction between capitalist production and social reproduction has intensified to the point of crisis (Fraser 2016). The onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic has thus confronted societies the world over that are already weakened by the intensification of complex inequalities and disinvestment in social infrastructure across all the domains underpinning social reproduction. This has demanded immense state effort to deal with the public health and socioeconomic consequences of this unprecedented crisis.

### 3 The gendered effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and state responses

From the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, state policies tended to follow a similar pattern. Faced with rising infections, and increasing numbers of people in need of hospitalization and dying from the virus, governments attempted to stop the virus from spreading by imposing lockdowns, quarantines, and curfews. In addition to tackling the public health dimensions of the pandemic, many governments created policies and programmes to mitigate its economic and social consequences through new financial assistance instruments and by adapting already existing labour market programmes or infrastructural projects. Three factors – the spread of Covid-19, severe restrictions on movement

Social Reproduction and State Responses

and social contact, and public policies to support livelihoods and economies – have affected entire populations. However, contrary to the idea of the 'great levelling effect of the virus' reported in the media, the effects of Covid-19 have been socially differentiated.

#### **3.1 Gendered effects of the pandemic in the production/reproduction nexus**

Starting with the gendered effects of the pandemic on paid work, women globally have been particularly affected, since they are overrepresented in the socalled essential jobs, typically including health and other forms of care, food provisioning, retail, service, and public transportation jobs. While many workers have been required to adapt to working from home, those in jobs classified as essential have had to commute and work onsite. This has lowered their risk of unemployment and working time and pay reductions, or a complete loss of income, but it has increased their risk of infection due to direct contact with customers, patients, passengers, or colleagues (EIGE 2021: 61–63).

In Europe, gender is a crucial factor disadvantaging women in terms of exposure to contagion through work, due to sectoral and occupational segregation: women are less likely to be able to work remotely than men and their jobs often involve close contact with others (Lewandowski/Lipowska/Magda 2021). In the EU, one of the world regions with the highest employment in the care sectors, women represent over 76% of healthcare workers, 90% of other caring professions such as childcare and elderly care, and 95% of domestic workers (proportionally the smallest segment of care employment) (EIGE 2021: 57). In other world regions, care employment is also highly feminized, but domestic workers comprise a larger proportion of care jobs, especially in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, as well as in many countries in Latin America, including Brazil (ILO 2018). Even in countries with low levels of care employment, care work is an important source of income for women, for example in India, where paid care employment accounts for 10% of women's overall employment, although a high share of it is informal, even in education, health, and social work (ILO 2018).

Despite a large proportion of women working in essential services, the pandemic has increased women's job insecurity because of their employment in sectors that have been affected by lockdowns – nursery, secretarial, domestic, non-essential retail, hospitality, and tourism work. Data for the European labour markets show that women and men were hit by unemployment more or less similarly in the second quarter of 2020, but by the summer's slight recovery, fewer women than men had re-entered the labour market (European Union 2021: 20). This is a more widespread phenomenon – even in countries where men's unemployment is higher, more women left the labour market altogether in 2020 (UNCTAD 2021). Globally, and across all regions, in 2020 women's relative employment losses were higher than men's, although men lost more jobs in absolute numbers (ILO 2021). This development attests to women's more precarious labour market position, whether due to part-time, short-term, or informal employment, which makes them especially vulnerable to economic contractions. Being in precarious employment, women are unprotected by social security systems, do not receive unemployment benefits or other 'postsupport labour income' (ILO 2020, 2021: 2; Kesar et al. 2021), and shoulder the gendered responsibility for unpaid work.

Everywhere, without exception, women spend more time on housework and care than men, performing 76% of the total unpaid care work, or 3.2 times more than men (from 1.7 in the Americas to 4.7 in the Arab states) (ILO 2018; Blasko et al. 2020). The pandemic has increased the burden of housework and its intensity and the need to provide home-based care, with women and girls carrying the greater load of these increased demands (UN Women 2020b). With the closing down of schools and childcare facilities, in many European and other high- and middle-income countries, women more than men have reduced their working hours or have left employment to provide childcare (European Union 2021; UN Women 2020b). This implies a widening of the gender gap in unpaid labour, given additional reproductive work resulting from caring for family members with a Covid-19 infection or quarantining at home and in the community. Furthermore, 'stay at home' orders potentially trap more women in domestic spaces, exposing them to increased risk of experiencing physical and psychological harm through domestic violence (Scheele 2021). All EU countries have reported an increase in domestic violence against women and children during the pandemic (European Union 2021: 5), and the UN has called the global increase in domestic violence a 'shadow pandemic' (UN Women 2020c).

Importantly, not all women have been affected in the same way and we find significant differences in vulnerability between different groups of disadvantaged women. These differences build on pre-existing global social inequalities (Sproll 2020). Studies show that the degree of inequality varies largely according to race/ethnicity, class, caste, migration/citizenship status, or lone parenthood (Kesar et al. 2021; Desai et al. 2021). Several studies point at Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where especially Black and ethnic minorities, both women and men, have experienced above-average infection, illness, and death rates (Gomes 2020; PHE 2020; CDC 2021). In India, where the pandemic reached another peak in the spring of 2021, the existing caste system regulates established hierarchies, discrimination, and social distancing. Many basic healthcare workers are women from lower castes (Dalit) who often work with low or no remuneration and personal protective equipment, while Muslims, Dalits, and women are most affected by job losses and Social Reproduction and State Responses

food insecurity (Gosh 2020: 528). While the intersectionality of inequalities is highly significant in all world regions, it plays an even more fundamental role in many countries in the Global South, not least because of colonial legacies. Given the gendered socioeconomic impact of the ongoing pandemic, what has been the state's response and with what consequences?

#### **3.2 State responses**

In many countries worldwide, by April 2021 the fiscal stimulus responses to the pandemic had reached unprecedented levels. In Germany, three supplementary budgets amounted to 347 billion euros or 10.3% of GDP. The Polish anti-crisis shield and the financial shield reached nearly 70 billion euros or 14.5% of GDP. In Brazil, a series of fiscal measures added up to 12% of GDP, while in India, immediate spending, deferred revenues, and expedited spending amounted to 9% of GDP (IMF 2021). This financial aid moderated the economic shock and its effects on businesses and employees. Governments gave money or deferred revenue streams to small, medium, and large companies, either as direct grants or indirect benefits through tax and payment advantages, public loans, and extensions of deadlines for social security contributions.

In Germany, for example, tourism companies such as TUI received 1.25 billion euros, while the airline Lufthansa received a rescue package funded by Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium providing various aid and equity measures amounting to 9 billion euros – of which the airline had only drawn 2.3 billion by summer 2021 (Spinnler 2021). Different from the UK, where the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme obliged companies in the aviation sector to secure employment, the state aid scheme for Lufthansa did not. At the same time, restaurant owners, hoteliers, and small- and medium-sized enterprises as well as the self-employed were entitled to apply for assistance based on a certain percentage of lost revenue. Countries also addressed employees directly; for example, in Spain federal states offered public guarantees for repayable new loans and direct financial support to self-employed persons. Yet, some programmes, like furlough schemes to support workers in the UK, ended up benefitting firms owned by the world's wealthiest people and tax exiles (Guardian 2021).

In addition to fiscal and monetary measures, many countries in the Global South have also focused on social assistance, direct aid programmes, and inkind benefits. These have been particularly relevant to women, as about half of these policy measures explicitly 'fall into the social protection category' (UN Women 2020a: 8). These programmes have partly been supported by the World Bank (2021) and ranged from direct cash transfers to food supplies and sanitary provision. They are aimed mainly at preventing the complete loss of livelihood and starvation by the poor and thus reflect the existing high levels of socioeconomic inequality and poverty that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Many countries of the Global South do not have the financial, institutional, or managerial capacities to buffer the effects of the crisis, although there have been diverse and partly successful strategies (Saad-Filho/Ayers 2020: 87).

As a whole, neoliberal restructuring has systematically dismantled state capacities and reinforced the implementation of conditionality in social provisioning, which has intensified inequalities along the lines of gender, class, and race/ethnicity. This reflects a very low level of state responsibility for social reproduction as a whole, even in countries that are among the big economic powers in the world, such as India and Brazil. In India, where the government provided grains, pulses, and stoves to the poor in urban agglomerations during the first lockdown, health systems are collapsing during the current explosion of infection and death rates, while the production capacity for vaccines does not serve the Indian poor. In Brazil, which has one of the highest per capita death toll from Covid-19 at the time of writing (Johns Hopkins University & Medicine 2021), the government paid a hard-fought emergency assistance package to ameliorate the existential threat to the livelihoods of many people. However, while billions of reais have been pumped into the financial system and big companies, the funding for emergency assistance is not only insufficient, but is partly being refinanced through the public sector, resulting in cuts to infrastructure and wages in feminized occupations, such as academics, teachers, public service employees, and – outrageously – the health system (Boschetti/Behring 2021). Of the globally adopted fiscal and economic measures to assist businesses, only 10% channel resources to women-dominated sectors, while of the social protection and labour market policies, only 8% address unpaid care and only 10% prioritize women (UN Women 2020a: 8).

Regarding the health sector, which over the last several decades has been, in most countries, underfinanced and subject to severe budget cuts through privatization and marketization, its capacity and resilience have needed reinforcement. The French government, for example, set up a policy programme, Ségur de la Santé, which includes 8.2 billion euros

for salary increases for hospital personnel and a further 19 billion Euros investment in the healthcare sector, including 6 billion Euros for Long-Term-Care institutions over the next 5 years (EIGE 2021: 64).

The difference between having (an even basic) healthcare infrastructure – or not – becomes apparent in the case of Brazil, where the constitution of 1988 includes a public healthcare system (Sistema Único de Saúde, SUS) guaranteeing basic access to healthcare for all (Paim et al. 2011). Despite the high Social Reproduction and State Responses

number of infections and deaths, it does provide important infrastructure for the country's Covid-19 vaccination program.

The examples of state responses to the Covid-19 pandemic share similar patterns of activity. Governments have rapidly set up numerous policy measures (sometimes circumventing usual procedures), reacting to the crisis by providing financial subsidies to those economic sectors hit most. As a result, public spending and debt are at a historical peak, but are hardly driven by investments into the social infrastructure necessary for social reproductive work to flourish, and thus into the future of societies.

### 4 Conclusion

From the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, gender has been a prominent feature. It has been recognized in public and policy debates, and experienced by those involved in the immediate response to the health crisis, or those social spheres most affected by the lockdowns and the reallocation of resources. Gender has become more visible because women are employed in education, care, and service jobs that were deemed essential to the daily functioning of societies, and because childcare in households suddenly presented itself as a challenge for parents, especially mothers. Both brought greater awareness of the highly gender-segregated labour markets and gendered division of labour. In addition, the high rate of infections among workers on short-term contracts, the closure of borders, and the restriction of labour migration, as well as the unequal access to preventive healthcare and medical assistance in case of Covid-19, have all shed light on large-scale intersectional inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic. All of these developments suggest that 'arguments for investing in a care-led recovery might get a better hearing' (De Henau/Himmelweit 2021: 467). It is, therefore, a paradox that public awareness of these problems did not result in adequate state policy programmes. Most policies have not only lacked gender sensitivity, but have exacerbated gender inequality, since they neither protect the most vulnerable groups in the labour markets nor initiate a fundamental change to build a more sustainable economy. Instead, we have witnessed a further increase in precarity for those in employment, especially for those working in essential jobs, and those excluded from labour markets and/or who are working in the informal economy. In general, state responses did not address the described crisis of social reproduction and the underlying structural causes of gender, class, caste, and race inequalities. Consequently, the global crisis of social reproduction is further deepening, while current policies are keeping capitalism on the move in unsustainable ways.

### References

Social Reproduction and State Responses

rueckzahlung-kredite-auflagen-101.html (accessed 26.8.2021).

Social Reproduction and State Responses

**Ania Plomien** is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies, London School of Economics. Her research focuses on gender in paid and unpaid work, social reproduction, and migration from a materialist feminist political economy perspective. Her substantive areas of research on policy, employment, labour mobility and care are in national (Poland, Ukraine, United Kingdom), regional (Central Eastern Europe) and supra-national (European Union) contexts.

**Alexandra Scheele** is Assistant Professor of economic sociology and the sociology of work at Bielefeld University. Previously, she held a substitute professorship at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University and the University of Erfurt as well as a visiting professorship at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her current research focuses on gender inequalities at work, care work and social reproduction and digitization of work. Important publications analyze the gender pay gap in a comparative perspective, the gendered division of labor and materialist theories.

**Martina Sproll** is Professor of Social Sciences (Structural Change and the Welfare State in International Perspectives) at the Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR Berlin). Her main research areas are Transnational Production and Labour, Digitalisation, Gender relations, intersectional social inequalities, (Feminist) Political Economy and Sociology of Latin America and Europe.

### The Gendered Architecture of the State and the Covid-19 Pandemic

#### *Gundula Ludwig*

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the state has shaped the everyday life of probably everyone in ways that would have been previously unthinkable.1 Given the key importance of the state in dealing with the pandemic, I consider it a crucial task for feminist scholars to critically engage with the state and its role. My core argument is that the gendered architecture of the state is a key factor in turning a *health crisis* (Covid-19) into a *comprehensive social crisis* accompanied by an increase in social inequality, violence and exclusion.

The theoretical background of my paper is feminist state theory, which builds upon the premise that the modern Western state's structures and logics are androcentric. Feminist state theory conceptualizes the modern Western state as a key actor that produces and reproduces gender relations in terms of inequality, domination and violence (Kreisky/Sauer 1995; Ludwig/Sauer/Wöhl 2009; Sauer 2001). From this perspective, I discuss the role of the state in the Covid-19 pandemic in four parts: care and reproduction; gendered violence; the biopolitical state; and the sovereign state. The geopolitical focus of my paper is Austria, though some arguments will also be applicable to other EU states.

Undoubtedly, it is also the state that has provided numerous support measures during the crisis, such as the introduction of short-time work, subsidies for lost earnings, and a bonus for healthcare staff. But, as I argue, the perspective of feminist state theory allows us to take the structures of the state and society into account, and show that these measures are highly selective. Furthermore, these measures cannot hide the fact that it is precisely the gendered architecture of the state that leads not to the reduction of social relations of inequality during a crisis, but rather to their intensification – because the state uses social relations of inequality as a crisis resource.

<sup>1</sup> I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer, Constanze Stutz and Antonia Kupfer for their helpful comments and feedback. Furthermore, I am grateful to Erika Doucette for her edits. Finally, I would like to thank the *Institut für Interkulturelle und Internationale Studien* at the University of Bremen for its financial support of the proof-reading.

### 1 Care, Reproduction and the State

A fundamental insight of feminist state theory is that the modern Western state systematically outsources social reproduction. In 1978, Mary McIntosh argued that the 'state frequently defines a space, the family, in which its agents will not interfere' (1978: 257), and it is the realm of family to which the state can outsource social reproduction. Thus, the state creates a sphere – the family, the realm of privacy – where social reproduction is organized based on heteronormative constructions of gender 'differences', gendered responsibility and love. As a consequence of this privatization, care work is often not considered work. Moreover, due to heteronormative, naturalizing gender constructions, women take on the majority of care work – and it is precisely this that allows the state to outsource social reproduction.

With regard to care, the state is structured based on a logic that is both androcentric and ability-centric. Following Julia Kristeva (1982), I argue that the modern Western state follows a *logic of abjection* with regard to dependency, care and nurturance. The citizen of the modern Western state is imagined to be a disembodied autonomous subject that has no bodily needs.  Due to the abjection and denial of bodily needs within the logic of statehood, activities concerned with the uncontrollability of bodies, neediness, illness and dying are devalued as low and 'dirty' and outsourced to women, most often racialized and migrant women.

With regard to modern Western welfare states, the state clearly does provide some support in case of illness or neediness. Not least in response to various social struggles, the welfare state has established some institutions, such as unemployment insurance, health and pension insurance, public childcare services, and institutions for people with disabilities. However, unemployment insurance and health and pension insurance are not a general form of collective care, since wage work and national belonging are requirements for access. Thus, they are structurally biased in a gendered, classed and nationalistic way. Furthermore, in its forms of organizing care work, the state actively uses gendered and intersectional relations of inequality – both by delegating it to the private sphere and the nuclear family, and by deploying relations of intersectional inequality as 'justification' that care work is poorly paid and organized in a precarious way (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2010; Lutz 2008). The outsourcing of care work to (migrant) women not only perpetuates gender stereotypes of care (work) as a 'natural' feminine trait, but also mirrors the low importance of care in modern Western societies and states.

#### The Gendered Architecture of the State

Many critical yet gender-blind analyses view the neoliberalization of the health care system as the reason why the Covid-19 pandemic became such a comprehensive health and social crisis. I argue that, when viewed from a feminist perspective, this diagnosis falls short. It is not just neoliberalism; the androcentric *and* ability-centric logic inherent to the modern Western state also played a crucial role. The neoliberalization of the health sector in recent decades has not only meant financial cuts; it has also resulted in an intensification of the logic of abjection within the state. Thus, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the care provided for people who were ill, elderly and in need was already inadequate. Additionally, care and health workers already had to deal with immense workloads (Dück 2021). It is precisely this neoliberal intensification of the logic of abjection that is causing the care crisis we are now facing due to Covid-19. A state that founds its healthcare system on the abjection of, and which structurally neglects, dependency, vulnerability and care, can be neither sustainable nor preventive – not in non-pandemic times and even less so during a pandemic.

The logic of abjection inherent to the state has not only transformed a health crisis into a fundamental social crisis; the state has also deployed gendered care politics as a *political strategy of crisis management*. The fact that people are called upon to provide childcare and home-schooling alongside their paid work clearly demonstrates the androcentric understanding of care and reproduction in the modern Western state. Feminist state theorists and scholars have criticized this attitude in numerous publications that draw attention to the (state's) assumption that reproductive and care labour is not work and can therefore easily be done on the side. This logic has become intensified during the Covid-19 crisis: by invoking family and privacy as resources for managing the crisis, the state actively uses the increased private unpaid workload of women as part of its crisis management policy.

Already during the 2008 financial crisis, the state exploited unequal heteronormative gender relations in its crisis management policies. The gendered policies that modern Western states are currently employing as a form of pandemic crisis management are not only leading to an intensification of the gendered division of care labour, because women carry the burden of the added care work (Mader et al. 2020), but they are also reinforcing the re-traditionalization of family and gender relations.

#### 2 Violence and the gendered State

Another cornerstone of feminist state theory is that the modern Western state is a key actor in upholding gender relations as relations of violence (Sauer 2008). Through state policies, people are made vulnerable in very different ways along the axes of gender, sexuality, migration, disability, class and race. Feminist state theory has a broad understanding of gendered violence: it not only includes physical and sexualized violence, but also economic and social violence. State policies that prevent participation or lead to poverty are therefore also understood as modes of state violence. Through labour law regulations, social policy measures and family law, the state produces different vulnerabilities based on regimes of gender, sexuality, class, race and migration.

Lockdowns and quarantine have led to an increase in domestic violence on a global scale (Baker 2020). For feminists, this development was rather predictable. Interestingly, the issue of domestic violence during the pandemic has been discussed publicly in an astonishingly direct manner, though in terms of the interrelation between violence, gender and the pandemic, what still fails to be addressed is the importance of the state – which, according to feminist state theory, plays a key role in gendered violence.

Over the past three decades – and not least as a result of feminist demands and struggles – important transformations have taken place regarding the interplay of gender, violence and state (Sauer 2008). Birgit Sauer interprets these transformations as ambivalent. While the Austrian state has introduced legal measures to combat domestic violence (e.g. legal orders to bar the right of entry for perpetrators), changes on a structural level that effectively address and reduce gendered forms of violence are still few and far between. The Austrian state primarily reduces anti-violence measures to ex post police interventions, while at the same time massively cutting funding for feminist anti-violence projects and women's shelters, among other things. To borrow a term coined by Angelika Wetterer (2003), these changes in the interplay between gender, violence and the state can be interpreted as 'rhetorical modernization'.

The state's policies during the Covid-19 pandemic fall under this logic of rhetorical modernization. At the beginning of the first lockdown in spring 2020, Susanne Raab, Austria's Minister of Women's Affairs, warned against an increase of domestic violence and announced that quarantine and domestic isolation were not 'lawless spaces' (Raab 2020; translation G. L.). But despite this rhetoric, as long as the state actively utilizes the privatization of care work, the unequal gender division of labour and the concept of heteronormative familialism as the foundations of its crisis management, it is itself complicit in the current rise in physical and sexualized violence against women, children and queer youth.

Following the broad understanding of gendered violence proposed in feminist state theory, it can further be argued that the pandemic has not only brought about a rise in physical and sexualized violence, but also in gendered economic and social violence. The Austrian state's crisis management policies and measures are clearly based upon intersectional selectivity: while financial support is primarily offered to those with 'regular' employment, 'atypical

#### The Gendered Architecture of the State

workers', like those who are precariously self-employed, sex workers or undocumented workers, are eligible for fewer benefits or none at all (Preglau 2020). Furthermore, the 'family hardship funds' introduced by the Austrian state in April 2020 are not available for single parents who lack child support due to reduced working hours or loss of employment. Thus, in the state's current crisis management strategy and its support policies, the state reinforces the economic and social vulnerability of all those who deviate from the 'norm' and whose daily lives were already insecure before the pandemic, such as the self-employed, migrant workers, single mothers or sex workers.

#### 3 The biopolitical State

The third area of theoretical investigation of the state in order to grasp the interplay between Covid-19 care and crisis is the field of biopolitics. According to Michel Foucault (2003), every modern state is a biopolitical state. State technologies of power focus on the lives of individuals and the population, with the aim of optimization. However, the biopolitical state does not consider every life as equally deserving of protection. The state uses racism and nationalism to draw a demarcation line between those lives that are to be protected and optimized by the state, and those that are not. As medical historical work on the plague, cholera and HIV has revealed, during epidemics, the demarcation between a racialized, national 'we' that the biopolitical state aims to protect and the 'other' comes to a head (Hammonds 2020; Thießen 2015).

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the racist and nationalist biopolitical dimension of the state has also become apparent. Racism and nationalism draw a demarcation line between those who should be protected, and those who are constructed as unworthy of protection, such as people in refugee camps, homeless people or illegalized workers (Crenshaw 2020; Thompson 2020). While at the start of the pandemic in spring 2020 the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered to fly Austrian citizens back from their holidays to 'their home country', the Austrian government strictly adhered to its anti-migration course and, until today, still refuses to evacuate refugees from the camps at the EU border, where the already inhumane living conditions have worsened since the onset of the pandemic.

Paul B. Preciado (2020) identifies two paradigmatic figures of Corona biopolitics. The first is the techno-patriarchal, techno-cybernetic neoliberal subject, which the state deems worthy of protection. This subject's right to protection is derived from its becoming a fully individualized digital consumer and digital communicator:

The subjects of the neoliberal technical-patriarchal societies that Covid-19 is in the midst of creating do not have skin; they are untouchable; they do not have hands. They do not exchange physical goods, nor do they pay with money. They are digital consumers equipped with credit cards. They do not have lips or tongues. They do not speak directly; they leave a voice mail. They do not gather together and they do not collectivize. They are radically un-dividual. They do not have faces; they have masks. In order to exist, their organic bodies are hidden behind an indefinite series of semio-technical mediations, an array of cybernetic prostheses that work like digital masks: email addresses, Facebook, Instagram, Zoom, and Skype accounts (Preciado 2020).

On the other hand, Preciado identifies 'unproductive zones of the social body' (ibid.). The inhabitants of these zones – the elderly or people with impairments, homeless people, women, people in refugee camps, prison inmates, and people with mental illnesses – can no longer transform themselves into techno-cybernetic subjects and are thus not worthy of protection and care.

As Foucault highlights, every biopolitical state needs knowledge so that it can govern its population, and it relies on androcentric, heteronormative, white, abled-bodied norms of bodies, vulnerabilities, care, reproduction and solidarity. The bodies of 'normal citizens' are viewed as autonomous entities. Bodily needs and vulnerabilities are neglected within this construction, care and reproduction are organized on the basis of social inequalities, and solidarity is defined highly selectively, as a commitment only between people who are – through a family or national order – defined as similar. These problematic regimes of knowledge have also shaped the way in which the biopolitical state has navigated the Covid-19 crisis. Indeed, these regimes of knowledge are not only androcentric because the majority of the experts consulted are white and male, but also because they rely on concepts of security, protection, immunity, care and vulnerability that stem from heteronormative, andro-, Euro- and ability-centric knowledge.

The biopoliticalstate thus configures its 'normal citizen' as an autonomous, healthy citizen with no bodily needs. 'Normality' is configured as a state in which everyone can function autonomously and beyond any (potential) vulnerability or sickness. The consequence of this understanding of 'normality' is that, even in a pandemic, the biopolitical state requires its citizens to function as usual – despite exhaustion, additional burdens, fear and anxiety. The crisis management policies that the Austrian state has offered do not entail any work relief – neither for those working in the so-called system-relevant professions nor for pupils and students. Rather, they call upon people to function as usual despite the many deaths, work overload, job losses and increased anxiety due to the pandemic – with the promise that we will soon 'return to normality'.

What is missing in the biopolitical state's regimes of knowledge are emancipatory discourses on how to deal with uncertainty and uncontrollability in a positive, sustainable manner and without selective biopolitics. Paradoxically, The Gendered Architecture of the State

queer-feminist, postcolonial and decolonial, and ability-critical approaches, which have emerged both from political struggles and academic discourses, have an extensive emancipatory archive of knowledge about care, bodies, vulnerabilities, reproduction, solidarity etc. These approaches have been developed through various practices, long before the Covid-19 pandemic. For instance, during the HIV/AIDS pandemic, queer activists developed networks of care and support that went beyond the narrow and exclusive concept of heteronormative families (Patton 1987; Gould 2009). Such emancipatory regimes of knowledge do not configure subjects as autonomous and disembodied, able to simply function even in a collective state of exception. Rather, biopolitics from such an emancipatory perspective raises the question of what responsible and solidary forms of care and dealing with vulnerability could look like. Sabine Hark has proposed learning from queer experiences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic to build solidarity networks in times of a pandemic:

Instead of assuming independently conceived organisms, which mutually merely represent an environment for each other and against which we can immunize ourselves in each case, it makes sense to learn to think from an emergent process that is always already interwoven. We must learn to live with the virus instead of acting against it. As paradoxical as this may sound: we live in community with the virus, we must form communities with it. Physically keeping our distance is just that: knowing that we coexist with the virus, we do not get too close to others spatially, thereby slowing down the virus and, figuratively speaking, preventing the virus from piggybacking on social processes. A practice of caring that thinks from others and their vulnerability rather than from our own immunity (Hark 2020; translation G.L.).

### 4 Sovereignty and Authoritarianism

Fundamental to the concept of the modern Western state is the assumption that the state is sovereign. And while the coronavirus exposes the vulnerability and relationality of people, the dominant response of states has been to adhere to this paradigm of sovereignty. This became obvious through the closure of national borders at the beginning of the pandemic, but also in the global race for medical equipment and vaccines. The paradigm of sovereignty can also be found in the rhetoric of war, where the state needs to *defeat the virus* (Enloe 2020).

Thus, even in these exceptional times, the state is promising to overcome uncertainties and uncontrollability. But this is simply not possible: we *are* in a situation filled with *uncertainty and uncontrollability*, since no one can know when the pandemic will be over, if there will be new mutations, or how long the vaccine will be effective. Yet instead of making politics a space where uncertainties can be articulated and collectively worked through, the state narrows the scope of politics in a masculinist and Eurocentric manner: it promises to defeat uncertainty with certainty, sovereignty and strong leadership.

From a feminist perspective, this promise of sovereignty is problematic in many ways. First and foremost, it is based on a phantasm that purports to overcome what is at the core of the condition of being human and of life itself, namely vulnerability. As Judith Butler (2004) has convincingly argued, to live is to be vulnerable. The assumption that it is possible to protect and safeguard life entirely is always – and all the more so in a pandemic – an omnipotent fantasy that no state can redeem. Nevertheless, during the pandemic, the state's promise of sovereignty is reactivating a very old patriarchal logic of protection at the price of subjugation.

Second, the masculinist neo-colonial phantasm of sovereign nation states renders global dependencies invisible. Due to neo-colonial power relations, states from the Global South cannot claim sovereignty in the same way as states from the Global North. For people living in the Global South, once again, this means an increased risk of vulnerability and death.

Third, the Eurocentric logic of sovereignty is also evident in the fact that state policies regard the vaccine as a miracle that will end the pandemic. The crisis will be over, we hear repeatedly, as soon as the majority of people are vaccinated. However, the vaccine is primarily a 'solution' for states in the Global North, as the vaccination rates of states mirror both the neo-colonial order as well as the global capitalist order: states in the Global South have to buy vaccines at a higher price than those in the Global North and, consequently, the vaccination rates in the latter differ significantly from those in the former (Randeria 2020).

Finally, the state's adherence to the phantasm of sovereignty also entails a threat to democracy. Technocratic politics of sovereignty depoliticize the crisis and narrow the political discourse. Already prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, in many Western countries such as Austria democracy had undergone a severe crisis, with a rise in authoritarianism and right-wing populism. The political dimensions of the pandemic entail numerous risks that strengthen these tendencies. In Austria, right-wing extremists and populists are successfully using the regular demonstrations critiquing the anti-coronavirus measures to further their own political agenda – not least because the Austrian government allows them to. Various politicians from Austria's right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) take part in and give speeches during the demonstrations. Furthermore, the authoritarian and technocratic understanding of politics that the Austrian government is deploying in its Covid-19 policies also entails a threat to democracy. The fact that in April 2020, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz stated that he was unwilling to change Covid-19 laws, even if they were unconstitutional (Der Standard The Gendered Architecture of the State

2020a), or that Austria's Interior Minister proposed allowing the police to interrogate infected people (Der Standard 2020b), are just two examples of authoritarian elements of the state's politics in pandemic times.

### 5 Conclusion

Based on the premise of feminist state theory, in which the state is a key actor that brings about and reproduces gender relations as relations of inequality, domination and violence, I argue that the androcentric, heteronormative, ability-centric and Eurocentric architecture of the state is a key factor in – and indeed has paved the way for – transforming a health crisis (Covid-19) into a fundamental social crisis. Quite paradoxically, these androcentric, heteronormative, ability-centric and Eurocentric logics inherent to the state are also what make it possible for the state to easily activate intersectional structures of inequality in its crisis management strategies. This in turn will further deepen these existing structures of inequality and will by no means overcome the fundamental crisis we were already in prior to the onset of the pandemic. Against this background, feminist interventions are necessary, which offer emancipatory knowledge and practices on how to reconfigure politics in ways that go beyond androcentric, heteronormative and Eurocentric constrictions. That is, not as state politics that stem from a phantasm of the subject as disembodied, sovereign and invulnerable, but from a politics of care and global solidarity.

### References

Der Standard (2020a): Anschober will Unschärfen bei Corona-Gesetzen bereinigen. 14 April 2020. Der Standard. https://www.derstandard.de/story/

2000116857020/opposition-stoesst-sich-an-kurz-aussagen-zur-verfassungskonformitaet (accessed 10.03.2021).

The Gendered Architecture of the State

19: #1 Blog: Zeitverwendung von Paarhaushalten während COVID-19. https://www.wu.ac.at/vw3/forschung/laufende-

projekte/genderspezifscheeffektevoncovid-19/1blog (accessed 10.03.2021).

**Gundula Ludwig**, professor of gender studies and chair of the Center Interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung Innsbruck (CGI), University of Innsbruck. Fieds of interests: Queer-feminist political theory, biopolitics, history of medicine.

# Part IV: Directions of Feminist Transformation

#### Time for Caring in Quarantine: The Democratic Value of Spending and Wasting Time Together

#### *Bianca Sola Claudio*

Joan Tronto (2013) recognizes that democratic caring concerns relationships which require time and space. Fostering democratic caring will require asking not the question of *how do I fit in caring around my work?* but rather *how do I fit in work around my caring responsibilities?* (White 2020). This paper argues that *time for caring* presents itself differently during the Covid-19 pandemic, as some of us are required to spend more time with the other members of our households, while others have less time for caring or have to be confined with each other in conditions under which democratic caring cannot flourish. Yet, our needs also shift during crises, and the ways in which we are cared for need to be adapted. The direction of transformation would particularly demand that we dedicate more time to spend with others (even when we live within a shared household), which would translate into *time for caring*.

Julie A. White (2020) argues that a *caring democracy* would not only require more time for care, but would also demand more time for caring deliberation. This describes the sustaining of an alternative temporal regime that would resist the commodification of care. The purpose of this paper is to consider White's claims and highlight possible scenarios that may be emerging under the new temporal regime of the Covid-19 pandemic, and which could affect *time for caring*. This paper indicates the possible challenges that the pandemic poses for us in terms of translating *time for caring* into an actual *democratic caring* during a crisis, which mainly relates to the commodification of care, gender inequality and precarious living conditions.

Within this paper, it is highlighted that equal or good care – in terms of care valuable to a democracy – is more difficult to sustain during a crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic; this also refers to the privileged cases where even though a household can no longer outsource care, household members do have time to execute the care responsibilities themselves. In this regard, different types of quarantine scenarios are portrayed, where, on the one hand, crammed and stressful conditions present a challenge to democratic caring, and, on the other hand, in the privileged cases, more time is also unlikely to lead to democratic caring. A collective shift to prioritizing *time for caring*, or care responsibilities, over *productive time*, or productive responsibilities, is necessary in order to build a caring democracy.

#### 1 No Time for Democracy and no *Time for Caring*

Marx's Grundrisse is mentioned frequently in most of the critical literature on time and temporality. Marx argues that capitalism compresses time and space in the pursuit of new efficiencies. The question of who can afford time is particularly relevant in studies focusing on acceleration as a tendency initiated through industrial innovation (White 2020). If we think of the ways in which we operate within a political arena, it is plausible to assume that time would be key to not only developing, but also maturing, political debates within a democratic regime. As a democracy embraces plurality, we not only ought to have time to participate in these discussions, but also to unfold ideas of possible actions and political changes. It is, however, rather more likely that a culture of acceleration, in which the pursuit of new efficiencies is valued, damages such democratic debates and participations.

Wendy Brown (2015) argues that we are now operating within a political arena where citizens function as investors or consumers, rather than within a democratic polity in which we share certain common goods, places and experiences. Her explanation indicates the ways in which democracy itself has been radically transformed by the dissemination of neoliberal rationality in all spheres, including politics and law (see also White 2020). Brown further recognizes how 'distinctly political meanings of equality, autonomy and freedom are giving way to economic balances of distance and the distinctive value of popular sovereignty is receding' (2015: 177). What this entails, or the factors that influence citizens to act as investors or consumers rather than citizens, are, however, too many to mention here. Brown's argument is easily defended in the evident claim that a culture cannot operate as it should within a regime based on participation and plurality – as democracy should be – if time is seen as a commodity and therefore reduced to productive output or productive time. Different authors name and support the claim that democratic regimes need time, as do their citizens. It is then justifiable to argue that a democratic polity would, in the current time regime, encourage citizens to be 'technically skilled human capital not educated participants in public life and common rule' (ibid.). This inclination towards skill leads to an education system that mainly focuses on contributing to capital enhancement.

If democracy were slow, however, then so would be caring. If we require time to act as citizens, then a lack of time would also affect the ways in which we care. Mutually caring relationships, which are supposed to give us emotional support, require more time and fluidity than a one-hour appointment with a therapist. The problem lies, however, both in our lack of time and the fact that we are accustomed to a model of accelerated time. This requires thinking about the practices, and not only the amount, of care time. Mutuality describes an aspect of caring that is neglected within the frame of accelerated

Time for Caring in Quarantine

time; this aspect is central to a relationship, but is displaced by exchange in affective labour (Hochschild 2012). This type of labour, as White (2020) indicates, is typically also regarded as 'good care', which almost implies that this commodification goes beyond the nature of these relationships. As clients, we expect care workers to be generous and thus we demand more of their labour than they necessarily have to give.

Caring to an extent that goes beyond the requirements or beyond what has been agreed upon is more consistent if mutuality is applicable, as, for instance, in friendships. In the process of identifying such commodification, Arlie Hochschild (2012) compares us to clients and consumers on the basis of these outsourced personal relationships; this is similar to Brown (2015), who identifies the citizens of a democratic regime as being within a culture of acceleration. Hochschild's outsourcing model indicates that friendship relationships are often overshadowed by these statuses (in White 2020). Particularly interesting regarding this outsourcing and acceleration of care is that it renders privilege a key aspect of who is cared for. Two questions are relevant here: first is the question of who can afford to outsource care and be cared for, and second is the question of who enjoys more privilege and has the time to maintain relationships of care?

### 2 If we had more *Time for Caring*

Jennifer Nedelsky proposes that *time for caring* is frequently achieved by simply spending time with those who are being cared for (in White 2020). Providing company to a person who is lonely, or simply being at their disposal, could already be seen as caring and contributes to building a relationship. Martha Nussbaum (2012) depicts what she calls the *sympathetic imagination* as one of the necessary democratic abilities. This ability would enable us to perceive others as people with their own thoughts and feelings, deserving of respect and empathy. The argument is that citizens with such abilities would overcome fear or suspicion during a debate and this would inspire a more sympathetic and sensitive approach. She further mentions that this debate has to be a multicultural 'one that acquaints students with some fundamentals about the history and cultures of the many different groups with whom they share laws and institutions (…) includ[ing] religious, ethnic, economic, social, and gender-based groups' (in Gregory 2011: 425). In pinpointing this intercultural literacy and its role in democracy, Nussbaum defends humanistic values and the importance of these disciplines in education. While education is important for the empathy needed in a democracy, however, we also need time to maintain relationships or *time for caring*.

### 3 Phases of Care

Joan Tronto and Berenice Fisher (1990) initially described this type of caring relevant for democracy, and Tronto (2013) later defined five phases of caring. The first is *caring about*: when the need for caring is noticed by a person or group. The second phase is *caring for*: after the need is identified, a person or group needs to take responsibility in order to make certain that these needs are fulfilled. In the third phase, *care giving*, the actual care work is executed. The fourth phase is *care-receiving*: after the care work is executed, the person (group, animal or environment) being cared for will respond. The observation of this response and the adjustment of care for future executions is part of the fourth phase *care-receiving*. Here, it needs to be evaluated, for instance, whether the care given was sufficient, successful or fully completed. It may be that the care receiver cannot respond, and thus in some particular care settings, the care giver may not be fully able to assess the effectiveness of caring. Finally, in the fifth phase, *caring with*, after the caring needs are covered, new ones will arise. As the final phase, caring with requires that the caring needs are compatible with democratic commitments to justice, equality and freedom.

Nearly all political theories entail one or several accounts of caring. It is necessary to develop an account of caring in a democratic society, firstly, because it is important to render care clear and graspable. This need is rather theoretical, but nevertheless essential, and is more obvious in terms of democratic care. Secondly, democratic caring does not only amend but also betters the quality of life of citizens living in a democracy (Tronto 2013). While democratic functioning ought to assume that citizens are equal, the meaning of equality can vary significantly among different democratic theories, as, for example, whether the understanding of equality is based on human rights and/or human dignity and the respecting of human autonomy. As Tronto (ibid.) puts it, theorists discussing democracy frequently delve into competing interpretations of these meanings.

Democratic caring is different as it assumes that we are equal in being care receivers; this is a perhaps peculiar, but nevertheless very distinctive, account of equality, especially when we consider that the presumption that we are all care receivers is not the same as claiming that we all have the same needs. It is, however, the same as claiming that we are all needy, even if in different ways. At some point in life, we are all engaged in caring in the position of the care receiver. These needs vary not only from individual to individual, but also from care receiver to care receiver, or between groups – at one point in time, or they may also fluctuate over time. And because all citizens are needy, but their needs differ from each other, the five phases of caring outlined above can be useful in assessing neediness; though they rather describe how we ought to Time for Caring in Quarantine

care, and not, for instance, what we are to do (where needs would again be equated).

#### 4 Change and Obstacles

A more obvious question to be addressed regards the changes that would offer us more *time for caring*. One way of considering the lack of time for care would be to pinpoint the centrality of affective ties and then to build infrastructure that allows us to care for those to which we are tied (White 2020). Nedelsky (forthcoming) considers this, but wishes to present another approach that entails a possible structural change in addressing part-time paid work and parttime unpaid care work. They assess three different problems, namely the unsustainable stress on families, the persistent inequality regarding women and others in terms of providing unpaid care work, and policymakers' lack of willingness to address care. The concrete proposal is that, in a radical restructuring, care time would be paid: above 12 hours and for not more than 30 hours a week.

Such a commodification of unpaid care could, however, be problematic. Tronto (2013) also accounts for the temporal context of care and highlights the link between time deficit and care deficit. However, Tronto also indicates that dividing these would reveal a qualitative difference between care work and productive work (see also White 2020). This is to say that she does not see market logics as inevitable, but rather claims that a caring democracy would have appropriate democratic institutions in place that would in turn restrict market logics. Tronto gives great value to intimate relationships, where spending time together is already part of the activity, as an important aspect of caring is simply spending time with one another listening to stories and observing care receivers (2013: 121).

During a pandemic or a crisis, where new fears emerge, we are needier, or at least needy in ways we were not before. Thus, we all need to be cared for in different ways during a crisis, as, during such a time, our neediness and needs shift rapidly. While it is impossible to make an overall assessment in which ways they will shift, if we compare our neediness during a pandemic to how needy we were before, it is plausible to assume that having *time for caring*  during a crisis and being cared for are both necessary. As the pandemic reveals variations in *time for caring*, it is useful to take this pandemic as an example of the following: if care has a democratic value, we ought to think of it in terms of time and how this time is influenced during a crisis.

#### **4.1 Temporality during the Covid-19 Pandemic**

If we consider time in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, it can be perceived both in terms of a halt in certain processes and an acceleration in others. That is, as slowing down, but also as an aggravation of the culture of acceleration. The pandemic could be perceived as a halt by some, given that many social and socioeconomic interactions have stopped or slowed down, and many personal or other projects have had to be put on hold. Thus, it could be that some feel that they have more time during the pandemic than before it. Simultaneously, we are witnessing that the social inequalities, which were already present before the Covid-19 pandemic, have not only been rendered more obvious, but have also been considerably aggravated, which means that some have to work significantly more and in worse conditions than before. In addition to this paradox, we are experiencing how this crisis has forced fast, if not sudden, changes upon us, as has been the case with the digitalization of everyday activities, for instance. There was not much time for implementation, as certain activities needed to shift suddenly online, or some people instantly had to work more hours than they had to before.

Between having more time or less time, care in general, including care practices and responsibilities, have been affected. As care occurs in many aspects of democratic society and in a person's life, it would be impossible to name each specific scenario in which care has been affected by the Covid-19 crisis. However, in describing the following two instances created by the crisis, we can identify which aspects of care, or situations of care, are relevant if we want to achieve Tronto and Fisher's (1990) fifth phase of caring, namely *caring with*. It would be redundant here to describe the specific phases of caring that are affected, as these would show significant context-dependency for each individual. Yet, as *time for caring* is heavily influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic, in the following we will describe how acceleration and deceleration might affect caring practices, whilst at the same time keeping the five phases of caring in mind. While the acceleration scenarios portray an intensified commodification of care, as well as a lack of time for caring, the deceleration scenarios present the problem of not having a structure in place that prioritizes care responsibilities over productive time or labour.

#### *4.1.1 Acceleration Scenarios during the Covid-19 Pandemic*

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many people did not have the privilege of having more time at their disposal, and some did not stop working outside their homes and even worked more hours than before. Thus, the lack of *time for caring* in this crisis again reveals the conflict between time for caring and productive time. However, the case of those who have less time further highlights

#### Time for Caring in Quarantine

the issues that long working hours and bad working conditions might pose for democratic caring. This is even more intriguing when considering care workers, as some have to work more hours during the pandemic, but they do not have time for care in their own personal relationships, since their productivity has had to increase.

Some issues with the commodification of care have been mentioned above, though during the pandemic, care workers have suffered from intensified conditions of commodified care. Generally, the value of care work lies in strengthening certain human relationships; however, the democratic value argued for in this paper cannot be developed when care is commodified in such a way as it has been during the pandemic. This returns us to the suggestions regarding transformation provided by Nedelsky (forthcoming), where they argue for a commodification of unpaid care work. Once commodified, care is perceived as labour and is no longer seen as strengthening interpersonal relationships in the same way, as we perceive our personal care responsibilities in terms of strengthening our relationships and not as being valuable for democracy. Significantly, during a crisis, and as our neediness changes, much of the care work that is normally marginalized is rendered essential and thus important to society. This highlights the marginalization of care work, as well as personal care responsibilities, in 'ordinary' (non-crisis) scenarios. This marginalization is problematic in terms of Tronto's (2013) five phases of caring, especially if the goal is to achieve the fifth phase.

#### *4.1.2 Deceleration Scenarios during the Covid-19 Pandemic*

For certain people during the Covid-19 crisis, a lockdown, for instance, came as a halt, interrupting the culture of acceleration. It has often been addressed in the media how a slowing down, in terms of less *productive time*, possibly results in more people spending more time with their families, thus potentially more *time for caring*1. This exceptionally privileged scenario could be what Tronto (2013) argues for. This positive scenario for caring could be even more favourable in terms of how, in these privileged circles, care is often outsourced, as Hochschild's (2012) model predicts. Commodifying and outsourcing care appears valuable because of a lack of time (Folbre 2001). The technical expertise of a therapist, for instance, is recognizably valuable, while also not affordable for a majority of people (White 2020). In outsourcing care, the value attributed to the practice is related to the amount we are ready to pay. An example here would be the value of a nanny functioning as a co-parent (ibid.). Care

<sup>1</sup> During the COVID-19 pandemic many newspapers reported on the change in the lifestyle of people who no longer have to commute, work in their home-offices and consequently have more time to spend with their partners and children (Hudson, 2020). (See also Venutolo-Mantovani, 2021; Chaker, 2021)

workers are then often put in an in-between space. If a nanny has value as a co-parent, the question arises of how the child's needs could be bounded well by time and space (ibid.). Due to this lack of clarity, a good care worker is generous, particularly with her time, but also in terms of extending her duties.

If, within a household, caring used to be heavily outsourced before the pandemic, and the *productive time* of the members of that household remained the same during the pandemic, then less *time for caring* would be the result. In these cases, as Tronto (2013) suggests, the household members would likely be forced to work around their caring responsibilities, as democratic caring would require asking the question of *how do I fit in work around my caring responsibilities?* and not *how do I fit in caring around my work?* In the ideal case, where less outsourcing occurs and where these questions can be asked, perhaps a modest shift towards democratic caring could be achieved.

Yet having more *time for caring* or spending more time together during the Covid-19 pandemic does not always translate into democratic caring. In many households where there is more *time for caring*, a gender hierarchy and other forms of abuse are reinforced. For families that have to spend more time together in close contact, including in cramped conditions, the disruption of livelihoods and the ability to earn a living reduces access to basic needs and services, and can thus cause significant additional stress (Roesch et al. 2020). Furthermore, a disruption of social and protective networks may further exacerbate intimate partner violence (ibid.). While these situations of abuse undeniably create a hostile environment for democratic caring, gender plays a worrisome role within this framework, even if no violent act takes place. Gender hierarchy thus presents an issue in itself, even if more *time for caring* would be expected (Larsson 2017). A caring democracy would have to address the ways in which feminine care work trespasses even those boundaries set through measurable time and outcomes (White 2020).

In terms of gender inequalities, the lack of consideration of gender and its intersections has also become clearer during the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of how institutions have responded to the crisis. In the wake of the pandemic, institutions and stakeholders have been concerned with dealing with the effects of the virus and attempting to quickly find efficient solutions. In doing so, many seem to have forgotten the systemic issues that were already deeply rooted in society and, in many cases, have been intensified during the pandemic (Fisher and Ryan 2021). For example, only 37% of the Covid-19 cases reported to the WHO were disaggregated by sex/gender, and where they were, the majority reflected binary conceptualizations. Social psychological research is thus not immune to the erasure of nonbinary gender identities (ibid.).

Those living in precarious conditions will also not have the ability to spend time together in a manner that translates into democratic value. This entails persons in situations of extreme poverty or without shelter, and those in precarious detention or migration facilities – what Raju and Ayeb-Karlsson (2020)

#### Time for Caring in Quarantine

refer to as 'temporary environments'. Thus, we ought to consider here that the situation and context in which people spend time together will affect the ways in which this translates into *time for caring* and potentially into democratic value. The 'wash your hands' rule or the guidelines for self-isolation and social distancing, among others, might not be possible within such temporary environments (ibid.). As a result of the pandemic, conditions in such places have worsened, including increased interpersonal conflict and the spread of further infectious diseases due to the cramped spaces in which people have been compelled to isolate (ibid.). Although we speak here of temporary environments, these places have existed for decades and in many cases have housed several generations. A study in slum sites in Dhaka and Mumbai, for example, where 'working from home' is not always an option, discloses the precarity of households that lack closable doors or windows and have had to house up to 15 individuals during the pandemic, and where neighbours in similar conditions live wall to wall (ibid.). Simply spending time with one another listening to each other's stories and observing care receivers, in the way Tronto's (2013: 121) caring democracy predicts, could be a part of caring within these conditions; however, it seems more conceivable that, in such cases, these interactions of care will not necessarily lead to democratic caring.

As people are forced into certain spaces, even if they have the privilege to be in an ideal space, it remains questionable whether they can translate this time spent together into time that would eventually be valuable for a caring democracy. This scenario shows that more time for caring responsibilities needs to translate into less productive time. For instance, those who commute in an ordinary situation where public spaces operate regularly would now not have to do so. However, they would perhaps still need to be productive in their home office, or if not, it is likely that, due to the culture of acceleration, they would spend their time doing an activity that is seen as 'productive' rather than doing something that would count as caring for others. Whereas in some cases this might have resulted in more caring practices, such a crisis renders visible how *time for caring* is just part of the problem. Thus, care in an ordinary situation, let alone during a crisis, cannot be done properly if it is not prioritized collectively, which means that it would need to be positioned before other responsibilities or before productive time.

### 5 Shift in Priorities

The reality of a change in temporal constraints during the pandemic, as well as the changes this situation entails regarding *time for caring*, challenges caring with regard to its translation to a caring democracy. Simply being given more

#### Bianca Sola Claudio

time, or the mere slowing down of the culture of acceleration, cannot provide the productive conditions necessary to achieve Tronto and Fisher's phases of care, as described above. In situations with less *time for caring*, socioeconomic inequalities are aggravated and, in the case of care workers, this leads to the further commodification of care. While having more *time for caring* during the Covid-19 pandemic could highlight a potential shift towards more democratic caring due to a possible reduction in the outsourcing of care, this situation also stresses the gendered hierarchy in *time for caring*. However, if no priority is given for care responsibilities over work responsibilities or productive time, then having more time at one's disposal is unlikely to lead to democratic caring.

A further issue that occurred in the two scenarios named above – acceleration and deceleration – is that we also ought to be able to choose to have this *time for caring*. During the Covid-19 pandemic, individuals have technically not chosen to spend more time in their homes; rather, due to the lockdown measures, they have been obliged to do so. Caring might thus happen not because we choose to spend time together, and maybe not even because we have caring responsibilities towards others, but simply because we are forced to stay together. This could even be the case for those not in quarantine. Yet it remains an interesting situation given that, suddenly, some of us have been compelled to spend more time together, even if there are constraints in terms of what we can choose to do with this time. If we were to choose to spend it together, however, it is likely that it would not translate into a caring democracy, as we still have institutions, as well as a culture of acceleration, which marginalize care practices. This is the case to such an extent that a desperate attempt to render care practices more valuable in our society is being made by Nedelsky (forthcoming) in their suggestion of commodifying unpaid care.

The scenarios that have occurred and the experiences that have been gathered during the pandemic, as discussed above, could reveal that the challenges to achieving the desired democratic care in contemporary society are related to *time for caring*, but also, and more importantly, to how productivity is prioritized over these caring practices. In this regard, however, further studies in the area of the social sciences would need to be conducted, looking at the type of activities people have engaged in during quarantine, leading to an analysis of whether these activities can be translated into democratic caring with regard to Tronto's (2013) five phases of care.

Time for Caring in Quarantine

### References

**Bianca Sola Claudio** is currently doing her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Cologne and her thesis explores normative questions of distributive justice and migration in the European context. Her dissertation examines the application of Amartya Sens's capability approach to a social minimum for migrants. She has previously completed her bachelor's degree in Economics and Politics at the University of Sussex and her master's degree in Social Sciences at the University of Zürich. Due to her background in these fields her research interests lie in theoretical grounds of social research, as well as in ethics and legal philosophy.

### Witnessing Fabrics: How Face Masks Change Social Perceptions During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Digital Times

#### *Pinar Tuzcu and Loren Britton*

#### 1 Introduction

Face masks are one of the most tangible prevention measures against the Covid-19 virus that have been used during the ongoing pandemic. This paper studies face masks from a sociological and artistic research perspective towards understanding how they become litmus fabrics for the societies we live in. Transcending their medical purpose, face masks have become everyday objects, integrated into quotidian activities. We argue that they are one of the most politicized materials of our present, particularly in the countries located in Western Europe. This is especially the case since, as they became mandatory in many public spaces, in some Western countries the requirement to wear face masks almost instantaneously ignited fierce political debate and became a new marker of ideological difference. By following the sociological and visual impacts of face masks on individuals and communities in European countries in general, and in Germany in particular, we claim that their omnipresence makes the complexities of various social issues and the interwoven character of different political discourses more apparent, vibrant, and viral. In this paper, we aim to analyze face masks' 'thing-power,' a power, as Jane Bennett once described, that indicates the 'curious,' and also perhaps unexpected, 'ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle' (Bennett 2009: 6).

Face masks are used in more than one hundred nation-states in response to the pandemic, though regulations around their use differ per region/country (#MASKS4ALL 2021). Indeed, the regulations around wearing face masks in public spaces reveal, we argue, unique characteristics of local social, political, and economic circumstances, both prior to and during the pandemic. Face masks were already highly politicized materials in the West, including in Germany, and the discourse surrounding them has been expanded upon – online – as we are experiencing 'the first pandemic of a datafied society' where much of life has taken place in digital space (Milan et al. 2021: 15). We suggest that face masks can be read as a *text-ile* material, where viral, bio-political, and digital aspects intersect; and we explore how face masks serve in discourses around representation within an increasingly polarized and datafied society. Face masks are a *text-ile* extension of digital viral worlds, we argue, and include the ableisms, otherings, and fascist coalitions that have accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic, both on- and offline. We follow what becomes perceptible and tangible when reading face masks as a witness to the digital data and algorithmic politics that produce political polarizations, to consider what is encoded into these pieces of fabric that we wear on our faces.

By looking at the depictions of face masks in political discourses that have gone viral online, we suggest that debates about face masks, which actually target mouths and noses, are interestingly more centred on *eyes*. That is, in these digital public discourses, being able to *see* the truth refers to the ability to accept or reject the truth. Drawing on critical perspectives from disability studies, we suggest that this ocular-centric approach of who *sees* the truth needs to be reconsidered. By analysing two different memes, we follow Sami Schalk's claim that using disability as a metaphor, for instance in the context of referring to the unfunctional parts of social life, is problematic and reductionist, as multi-sensory methods of inquiry suggest that ways of knowing also include touching, feeling, noticing, and breathing.

An ocular-centric construction of universal truth participates in a Westerncentric understanding that *seeing* and *uncovering* are the only ways of knowing. According to this perspective, *veiling* is perceived as an act of radicalism or illegality, of concealing and hiding. This perception suggests a debate-worthy link between the contradictory narratives around face masks that have emerged during the pandemic, and the emergence and convergence in Europe of anti-mask movements and anti-Muslim sentiments.

Working from a trans\*feminist intersectional perspective concerned with care and interdependence, we suggest that this pandemic has become crystallized in the images and material specificity of face masks, and has also generated a shift from a politics of care to a politics of vulnerability-in-common. On the one hand, with the concept *affect:ability*, we aim to decenter ocular-centric debates around viral truths by suggesting a multi-sensorial perception of what is going on. On the other hand, we use this term to highlight the transcorporeal ability to acknowledge vulnerability as common and to create a collective sense of response-ability (Barad 2007; Haraway 1997), by which we mean cultivating the capacity to respond to the damages that ableist discourses perpetuate – and have perpetuated – both before and during the pandemic.

Following this line of questioning, we follow the discourses and practices of wearing face masks in Germany and in the West. We ask: What relation do face masks have to structural oppressions like anti-Islamic sentiment or ableism? How can we read their social testimony as material witnesses of our time, and understand their political grammatology as knitted in their *text-iles*? And who is afforded a breathable life and who is not? (see Gumbs 2020; Górska 2016).

#### Witnessing Fabrics

*Throughout this article, we invite readers to enact breathing and mask wearing exercises as a way to engage with the materials we are working with. We invite you now to take a short breath, gaze away from this reading, and return after a moment.*

#### 2 Face masks as an ideological litmus test

Despite changing epidemiological narratives about their usefulness and function in preventing the spread of Covid-19, when the World Health Organization (WHO) updated its medical advice in April 2020 to suggest the use of face masks to effectively protect against Covid-19, these garments rapidly became widely worn worldwide.

In the beginning of the pandemic, it was claimed that face masks were not effective against Covid-19. However, this narrative was revisited by officials and healthcare professionals, who stated that face masks *might* be effective for preventing the spread of the virus; however, people were urged not to purchase surgical face masks, as these were reserved for healthcare personnel. The public response to this narrative was to create homemade masks using everyday cloth, and was perhaps economically more creative, aesthetically more cheerful, and one of the politically more solidarity-focused moments of the pandemic in Western countries. What was also embedded in this narrative, which radically altered the social meaning of face masks, was the claim that they were not necessarily effective for self-protection but rather for the protection of others. That is to say, wearing face masks was not about protecting oneself, but about reducing transmission rates and breaking contamination chains before the virus could reach vulnerable people.

Kar Keung Cheng et al., for instance, have argued that wearing face masks in the community 'shifts the focus from self-protection to altruism, actively involves every citizen, and is a symbol of social solidarity in the global response to the pandemic' (2020: 2). This narrative represented mask-wearing as an act of altruism and solidarity. Cheng at al. called this as 'an intervention paradox' – paradoxical in the sense that 'wearing a face mask brings moderate benefits to individuals but also has large population benefits' (2020: 1–2).

Soon after this, however, the altruistic narrative was abandoned, with new claims being made that face masks actually protect both the wearer and others (Bhatia 2020). Interestingly, this narrative also abandoned the previously-endorsed homemade masks, as it was claimed that such masks are not effective enough. It was suggested, and even demanded, that people wear either surgical or FFP masks, which are particle-filtering masks used by professionals – a type of mask that the public was initially discouraged from buying. With this new epidemiological public discourse – that face masks are mutually effective to control the spread of the virus – they were globally adopted. As of today, with the exception of nine countries such as Greenland, Sweden, Belarus, Turkmenistan, and Sudan, face masks are used as a primary prevention measure against Covid-19.

These rapid and highly contradictory discursive shifts about face mask wearing in public have, however, created a sense of confusion and fostered a lack of trust towards public officials and healthcare professionals and experts (Tüfekçi 2020). It remains a mystery how leading and prestigious institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and governmental agencies have managed to create so many different and paradoxical narratives about face masks. Especially, in the so-called post-truth era, when 'the fake news' go viral and the scientific languages and findings are contested and challenged by certain groups of people, particularly those whose political motivations are driven largely by the conspiracy theories, these confusing claims around face masks have fuelled sceptics of scientific, medical, and social research and have also provided further arguments for anti-mask movements.

This is particularly interesting given that using face masks in public spaces is, for many countries in the Global South, not new. For instance, many resources indicate that wearing face masks in East Asia and in south and central African countries has both medical and environmental reasons (see Burgess/Horri 2012; Mohammed Mohammed 2015; Offeddu et al. 2017; Howard et al. 2021). In a 2014 online article, Jeff Yang gives a brief but illuminating historical background of face masks in public space in Asian countries and underlines the fact that wearing a face mask in public emerged as a response to both the SARS-CoV and Ebola epidemics. Interestingly, Yang also makes a prophetic claim, writing that 'as pollution, climate change and pandemic illness become a routine aspect of our global reality we may soon see face mask fashion go viral in western countries as well' (ibid.).

Despite the scientific evidence and societal experiences of countries in the Global South, which have experienced two different epidemics prior to Covid-19, the confusing discursive narrative and curious resistance to using face masks in European countries demands further critical analysis. Regardless of the scientific and collective knowledge of those in the Global South, which shows that face masks, together with other prevention methods, are effective, face masks were late to be adopted and caused unique reactions in Western countries. For example, a study shows that face masks are still the least accepted measure against the pandemic in Western countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and France, while they are highly used and accepted elsewhere, particularly in Asian countries such as Vietnam, Japan, Turkey, and India.

#### Witnessing Fabrics

In Germany, using face masks in public spaces, such as on public transport and in grocery stores, was first introduced in the city of Jena on 6 April 2020. After this, mask-wearing regulations quickly spread throughout the entire country after the number of new infections in Jena fell to almost zero (Mitze et al. 2020: 2–5). This discursive shift about face masks impacted public opinion in Germany and created mixed feelings towards their use. After becoming compulsory, face masks quickly entered into an already heated debate concerning government control of the pandemic and became a symbolic material that carried with it both dystopian and utopian societal sentiments.

 The image includes text in German. In English it reads: Soon there will be the obligation for a blindfold, so that no one will see anymore what is happening in this country.

Source: Muthelm [Meenzer721] (2021)

between biology and culture, utopian and dystopian beliefs, and became a political filter. In this sense, the political discourses that went viral on the internet became coded, materialized in the form of these masks. In this way, face masks have almost turned into an analogue visual demonstration of a polarized society; as a new *text-ile* territory for ongoing divisions, they embody different political ideas and are a fabric precursor of the future not yet here. This division can be crudely put into two different categories: on the one hand, there are those who endorse and embrace face masks, the seekers and believers of scientific truths, advocates of social order, those who practice solidarity and empathy; on the other hand, those who resist donning face masks portray themselves as individualists, reductionist naturalists, and anti-governmentalists, as they perceive face masks to be a reflection of top-down governmentality, the footfalls of a totalitarian regime, and a violation of the laws of nature. For those who are critical of the capitalist politics of reproduction and its impact on the environment and under-privileged groups and communities, face masks represented hope and a sign for change towards a society in which collective sharing and caring practices become a norm, but most importantly perhaps, rendered a reaction to the rising extreme right-wing opinions in Europe more tangible and visible.

Image description: There are two people in the image: on the left a person with mediumlength black hair is wearing a white face mask and is looking out at the viewer; on the right is a person with short hair and a board in front of their eyes, emblazoned with the word Querdenker\*in, which refers to a politically mixed group of people, who are mostly consist of the supporters of extreme or centre right-wing politics in Germany and rejects the prevention measures against Covid-19 for various reasons. There is also a text in the image in German.

Source: BgR – Bündnis gegen Rechts Kassel [BgRKassel] (2021)

Furthermore, we have observed how face masks have become one of the most hotly debated and controversial garments after hijabs and niqabs in European countries. We suggest that the initial resistance to the hijab and niqab informed the resistance to adopting face masks to combat the Covid-19 pandemic; we thus read subsequent anti-mask demonstrations as linked to Western ideological visions that accompany 'the veil' and 'veiling', which are seen to be against the principles of Western Enlightenment, and therefore face coverings in general are seen as against Western body politics. The banning of hijabs and niqabs in public spaces in some European countries, such as France, and yet allowing and even requiring the wearing of face masks in public spaces, has led to controversial reactions in public discourse (McAuley 2020; Warner et al. 2020).

As can be seen in the above two images, however, both the political discourse that criticizes and that which endorses face masks have shifted the focus to the eyes. The desire to *see* the evidence, to unveil things for vision – as the primary way of knowing – is very much ingrained in Western forms of knowledge-making and inquiries for truth (Rose 2016). This ocular-centric understanding of 'evidence' has also been criticized by many scholars within critical disability studies. As Sami Schalk argues,

the assumption that we can presume the existence of a shared understanding and knowledge of bodily (including sensory and cognitive) experiences that will serve Witnessing Fabrics

as the concrete concept through which we figuratively communicate abstract ideas (as metaphors of disability do) is, however, very problematic,

since such assumptions, according to Schalk, 'rely upon allegedly universal experiences of the body' (2013: 5). Their analysis re-affirms critical perspectives on ocular-normative ways of knowing and re-enforces an ableist construction of truth. Ben Whitburn and Rod Michalko argue 'that ways of being (ontologies) fully sighted or otherwise' are linked to the 'way of knowing (epistemologies)' that generate a marginalized depiction of experiences and knowledge of 'people with vision impairment' (2020: 219–220). Such vision might also be the reason why in Western countries, Covid-19 deniers became more dominant and gained more legitimacy during the pandemic due to the disbelief in anything that the eye cannot see. In this sense, face masks have become a material witness, a social testimony, that both right extremist discourses and contagious particles can go viral. Yes, even in Europe.

*What is the scale of breathing (Gumbs 2020)? When coming into awareness with your breath, how many more-than-humans and humans are you simultaneously breathing alongside? Consider our connectivity and come back to the text when you are ready.*

### 3 The face mask as material witness

Face masks are permeable materials between discourses, also in our explorations between sociological and artistic research contexts. We take up the concept of the material witness, as materials that twist between divulging evidence of their experiences in the world and existing themselves as evidence (Schuppli 2020). This Möbius-strip-like concept twists in on itself to consider how material artefacts, as non-human entities, archive (through imprints, toxins, accumulations, discolorations, stains, etc.) their interactions with the world. In this way, face masks are intriguing materials that witness, or expose, evidence of their use during the Covid-19 pandemic. We follow face masks as materials that trace intersectional impacts and provide traces of where and when matter becomes consequential. Coined by Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, the term intersectionality has been taken up by many and 'simply put, this principle says that we are many things, and they all impact us' (Sins Invalid 2019).

Who, what, and with what means information becomes knowledge is at the centre of our tracing of face masks as material witnesses, and as agents transforming relations throughout this paper. So far in this paper, we have followed how face masks become permeable fabrics that evidence some of the more violent right-wing, eugenics-leaning, survival-of-the-fittest, coalitional politics, as well as some of the more interdependence-leaning thinking that has come from the instituting of face masks as commonplace. We have traced how face masks have been taken up within nation-states as part of public health programs and have further explored how their transformation from homemade to mass-produced and store-bought has also brought out different capitalist and feminist considerations. Then we considered how the material qualities of face masks as face coverings, which have similar hotly problematic discourses as those surrounding veils and veiling, have become encoded as being against Western body politics. Now, in the final sections of our paper, we will explore how face masks, as material witnesses, have the potential to describe our common vulnerability and interdependency. We consider what makes a breathable life, and for whom, and we encode shared chances for care towards a *text-ile* that produces *affect:ability*, as a chance for face masks to literally and physically make a difference. Harbouring direct evidence of events, and witnessing more than human realms, face masks share a story through their material specificity that traces political discrepancies.

*We invite you to come into awareness and presence with your breath for a moment and ground into your body. When you spend time noticing your breath in your body, where does it go? What parts of your body feel present with your breath and which ones not?

In Germany, face masks have been at the centre of debates around questions of self-reliance and individual responsibility (both tenets of neoliberal capitalism) and understandings of bodies in common (a counter to this). These values, as expressed through wearing – or not wearing – face masks, have been at the heart of German leadership, with Angela Merkel herself becoming a figure of much debate regarding her use – or not – of what kind of face masks during the pandemic. So much so that a video of Merkel shortly forgetting to wear her face mask after delivering an address went viral and has been watched 'more than 3 million times on twitter' (Lock 2021). The mask as a material becomes a witness to the critiques and commentaries of Merkel as a figure of the state, and regarding what kinds of forgetfulness – or not – the state enacts.

During the pandemic, face masks evidence on each individual our inescapable interdependency. The collective sense of responsibility for public or collective care that face masks indicate also positions them politically as an indicator of relations in terms of who cares, and who does not, in political discourse. Such politicized moments have exploded within expanding anti-mask movements.

At a community scale, we suggest that face masks as material witnesses can be informed by disability justice as a framework through which to consider how interdependent relations structure the conditions that determine for whom life is breathable, liveable, and possible, and for whom it remains restricted, impossible, and about survival rather than co-flourishing.

To consider face masks as shape-shifting figures, both in material reality within communities and in political discourse, requires a framework that accounts for interdependence as a political tool. We are inspired by the work of Sins Invalid and their *10 Principles of Disability Justice*. In point eight on interdependence they state:

Before the massive colonial project of western European expansion, we understood the nature of interdependence within our communities. We see the liberation of all living systems and the land as integral to the liberation of our own communities, as we all share one planet. We work to meet each other's needs as we build toward liberation, without always reaching for state solutions which inevitably extend state control further into our lives (2019: 25).

What might it mean to understand collective vulnerability as something grounded in body-minds that do not reproduce a compulsory able-bodiedness? For many people, face masks are neither new nor novel. People have been using face masks for all sorts of care work for a long time; they are protective garments that create the conditions for life.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, as academia and multiple other professional contexts moved online, it became clear that the problem was not about making conferences accessible for people who are at home. Rather, one of the major problems has always been, and continues to be, ableism that is structural and pervasive. Our work considers how face masks have become material witnesses to the ways in which care is not equally distributed and is highly politicized.

Following the work of Alison Kafer, specifically her book *Feminist, Queer, Crip* (2013), she describes how we can think towards *otherwises* for crip queer presents and futures that do not reproduce the same ableist paradigms of the recent past. Kafer cites multiple examples of locating disability as a site of pleasure and taking pleasure in taking care. How can we think about face masks as a site of collective pleasure in protection? How can our always-inbecoming body-minds inform lives that are less about the reproduction of ableism and racism and more about creating the conditions of care that would allow all of us to live and breathe more freely?

*In this section, we invite you to grab a face mask, whichever one you might have nearby, and put it on.  Does your experience of your breath change?*

From feminist concerns of care, we suggest that the Covid-19 pandemic has crystallized, through the use of face masks, a perspective shift from a politics of care to a politics of vulnerability-in-common. On the one hand, with the concept *affect:ability*, we aim to decentre the ocular-centric debates around viral truths by suggesting the multi-sensorial perception of what is really going on. On the other hand, we use this term to highlight the transcorporeal ability to acknowledge our common vulnerability and to create a collective sense of response-ability to combat the damages perpetuated by ableist discourses both before and during the pandemic.

When we take face masks out of their practical use, as a garment that protects the physical body by filtering infection, they make us face, experience, and confront the body in a different way. They become a non-human agent, a *text-ile* extension, that reshapes our relationship to ourselves, to matter, and also to our environment and our social contexts. At once they mark fear and hope, solidarity and exclusion, they highlight and problematize hetero-patriarchal structures, and they mark particular people as obedient and subversive at the same time, in an extraordinarily banal way.

Yet, face masks also gesture our interrelatedness as a biological mass in relation to a tiny particle, and play a role as a barrier between the two. Thus, face masks force us to decentre our anthropocentric vision of life. What would we do without them, right? Pausing on this question reveals instantly the vulnerability of our human condition; perhaps most importantly, as face masks condition our lives in a *partical-ar* matter. Our shared vulnerability becomes understood as commonplace in a more significant way than before. This vulnerability, as the common rather than the particular, the ordinary rather than the exceptional, may also give space to generate new modes of political agency.

At the same time, face masks impact our ways of intimacy and proximity, since breath, although rarely acknowledged, is also an important language of communication. Breath meets through thin air, where bodies cannot or do not want to come together. Breath also constitutes a compassionate and an erotic entanglement of bodies – the touch in the air – as well as a border, as we keep a breath's-length distance from a person we dislike. In this sense, by recreating these intimate aspects of breathing, face masks become a means of alienation to others' breaths and at the same time are a way of protecting our bodily borders.

#### Witnessing Fabrics

*We invite you to once more come into awareness and presence with your breath. If you can, breathe into your toes. It may take several breaths to find them. Keep breathing until you feel your breath stretch through your body and return when ready.*

#### 5 Conclusion: Social *text(ile)* matters for breathable lives

The breathability of fabrics determines the quality of a face mask.  Racial and social justice in the USA, as marked by and with the Black Lives Matter Movement and beyond, quite painfully expose the political fabrics of social structures that determine the conditions of breathable lives.

Masks ironically also unmask the existing sexist, racist, and ableist social infrastructures. For instance, the politically-charged rhetoric of anti-maskers evokes the anti-Islam approach to the veil. Anti-mask demonstrations in Europe have created more space for the already increasing violence towards racialized minority populations. This increasing violence has become affiliated with the so-called anti-maskers and is anti-Muslim, anti-migrant, and racist.  On the other hand, one can also suggest that face masks have become a ground for compromised masculinities, as they perform a kind of challenge to normative masculine bodily autonomy and presentation. In fact, a study done at Middlesex University London (2020) found that cis men 'more than women agree that wearing a face covering is shameful, not cool, a sign of weakness, and a stigma'.

We would like to draw on Magdalena Górska's discussion of the politics of vulnerability. As she argues in her 2016 text *Breathing Matters: Feminist Intersectional Politics of Vulnerability*, in such politics 'vulnerability' should not be seen as the 'qualifying characteristic (…) but rather it becomes as an intrinsic part of political dynamics' (302). This is to say that intersectional politics of vulnerability point to the 'continuous process of ambiguous transformations' that come with layers of ambiguities and social tensions, including 'failure and potentiality, pain and pleasure, affinities and separations, empowerment and weakness' (ibid.: 303). In this sense, face masks become the witness of such politics, as they also hold together 'natural, social, chemical, biological, genetic, microbial, material and imaginary environments' (ibid.: 303). Their material existence becomes a witness as their very texture testifies to our care-abilities for holding our lives breathable.

As a non-pharmaceutical collective care apparatus, medical face masks have become tangled up in multiple concerns about race, gender, religion, class, and ableism during the Covid-19 pandemic. These masks have become one of the most hotly debated garments of our time and the site of controversial debates over body politics. They have departed from indexing self-protection to becoming a metaphor in multiple contexts, unsettling many social borders. In determining who cares and who is careless, who believes in facts and who follows conspiracy theories, face masks have become material witnesses of social polarization. They do not only differ in terms of their type, colour, and shape in public spaces, but also demonstrate different political positionalities. From a hetero-masculinist perspective, for instance, face masks can be taken as a symbol of feminine (and feminist) care work. From a Western understanding, face masks can be taken as a practice of covering a body part, and can thus be associated with 'Islamic' veiling. And from a disability justice perspective, face masks can be a symbol of interdependency and community care.

In our paper, which embraces a trans\*feminist intersectional perspective, we have analysed face masks as material witnesses, thinking with Susan Schuppli (2020).  Drawing on the discursive shifts regarding the use of face masks in public – that is, the different witnessing of masks – we aim to unfold face masks as socio-technical infrastructures and show how their shapes, types, functionalities, and even the ways in which they are worn have become contested agents. Face masks produce a kind of data that ventures into questions of measurement, witnessing, and information, and produce the chance to recognize our vulnerabilities-incommon in a datafied society. Our discussion with and through face masks in terms of how they determine our social lives aims to create an analytical space wherein matter, event, and evidence can be stitched together. From a critical disability and anti-racist feminist perspective, we suggest a focus on *affect:ability* to highlight the fact that we are all in this together: in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic, nobody gets to be outside of our viral reality. Face masks are material witnesses acting against the disbelief that right-extremist discourses and contagious particles can go viral at the same time. With their thing-power, they have shown: yes, they can both go viral in Western Europe, too.

*Breathe and read:*

*I remember what you gave us which is everything. Light, home, and each other. Love, warmth, and ourselves. If I breathe, I sing your name. I can only breathe because of you. Do you have a century more of breath? And if not, what do I have? (Gumbs 2020: 26).*

### References

#### Witnessing Fabrics

**Loren Britton** is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher tuning with practices of Critical Pedagogy, Trans\*FeministTechnoScience and Disability Justice. Playing with the queer potential of undoing norms they practice accountability to matters of anti-racism, collaboration, Black Feminisms, instability, Trans\*Feminisms and transformation. With Isabel Paehr as *MELT*, they queer knowledges from computation and chemistry to shift metaphors of melting in times of climate change. Britton is currently an artistic researcher on the interdisciplinary project Re: Coding Algorithmic Culture within the Gender/Diversity in Informatics Systems Research Group at the University of Kassel, DE.

**Pinar Tuzcu** is a post-doctoral researcher and one of the main applicants and the project coordinator of the Volkswagen Foundation-funded project 'RE:Coding Algorithmic Culture' at the University of Kassel in the Department of Sociology of Diversity. Her research and teaching interests include postmigration studies, algorithmic power and, contemporary queer-feminist theories with a specific focus on anti-colonial feminism, and critical research methods and methodologies. She is currently doing her research on 'cybercolonialism' and her recent article on this topic appeared in the Journal of Postcolonial Studies (Routledge) with the title: 'Decoding the cybaltern: cybercolonialism and postcolonial intellectuals in the digital age.