The Facemask Paradigm: Symptoms and Non-neutral Limits during Coronavirus

Abstract

The Covid crisis has scholars thinking of how political relations and bonds will be transformed by this pandemic. By analysing current events in Spain, this article aims to analyse how, and why, the Schmittian political relation of friend-enemy and warfare narrative work as the discursive framework of this pandemic. This article proposes a feminist turn to antagonisms to articulate an alternative response to this crisis. Through a Lacanian reading of symptoms and facemasks, the article presents facemasks and symptoms as two crucial elements to analyse antagonism and locate the threat in current political relations. Lastly, the article introduces the facemask paradigm in which non-neutral limits work by positioning the threat inside the signifying chain and not outside of it, entailing a subversion of the classical Schmittian antagonism that implies a new political relationship based on corresponsability.