In this musing we consider how social distancing, the primary public health measure introduced to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus, is creating social encounters characterized by a self-and-other-consciousness and an atmosphere of suspicion, leading to what we call “alienated embodied communication.” Whilst interaction rituals dominated by avoidance, fear and distrust are novel for many individuals who occupy positions of social privilege, Black and ethnic minority writers have demonstrated that the alienated bodily communication of COVID-19 social distancing is “nothing new” for people who routinely experience marginalization as a result of racism. Our aim in this musing, then, is to reflect on how on-going experiences of stigma, shame, and marginalization can shape how social distancing is registered on an embodied and existential level, and therefore how social distancing may differentially impact individuals with lived experiences of racism.

In this musing we consider how social distancing, the primary public health measure introduced to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus, is creating social encounters characterized by a self-and-other-consciousness and an atmosphere of suspicion, leading to what we call “alienated embodied communication”. Whilst interaction rituals dominated by avoidance, fear and distrust are novel for many individuals who occupy positions of social privilege, Black and ethnic minority writers have demonstrated that the alienated bodily communication of COVID-19 social distancing is “nothing new” for people who routinely experience marginalization as a result of racism. Our aim in this musing, then, is to reflect on how on-going experiences of stigma, shame, and marginalisation can shape how social distancing is registered on an embodied and existential level, and therefore how social distancing may differentially impact individuals with lived experiences of racism.

Through a performative and speculative style of writing, this chapter develops the ways in which non-representational theories might provide purchase in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we present two short juxtaposing autoethnographic vignettes of our experiences of lockdown in the South of England, UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, we offer some theoretical suggestions, guiding the reader through an 'ABC' of non-representational concepts including absent presence; affect; atmospheres; bodily knowledges; and corporeographies, before inviting them to make their own connections and think through their own experiences. The intention here is to provoke speculation, to animate in our reader new ways of making sense of their relational, non-representational experiences of the pandemic. In this way, the chapter performs some of the tenets of nonrepresentational thinking and doing. We conclude by speculating ourselves on the ways that the pandemic has re-figured and re-constituted our own bodily boundaries and knowledges; affective and felt experiences in public spaces; and everyday encounters and routines. Fig. 1 BBC News Alert (author's iPhone screenshot) I'm sitting at my desk, trying to write. Everyone is working at home and the house feels full, noisy and overwhelming. I'm not used to this proximity with my family's working lives. There's an atmosphere of stress and anxiety. Suddenly, my phone screen lights up, a notification from BBC News: 'The world is shutting down'. A feeling of vertigo, of overwhelm. I feel surrounded and consumed by COVID and its effects: death tolls, news cycles, Twitter hot takes. It's suffocating.