COVID-19 and the Anxious Body

Abstract

This article reflects on the way COVID-19 has altered our understanding and experience of everyday life, with a particular focus on the relationship between anxiety and the body. There are a number of ways to think about how anxiety has impacted bodily experience during the pandemic, and I focus on two specific aspects. First, I focus on the transformation of the body from a site of pre-reflective unity to its thematization as a discernible thing. In the process, I argue that this disclosure of the body as a thing renders the body an object of anxiety while also being an expression of anxiety. Second, I consider the role anxiety plays in altering our relationship to other people. Instead of a fluid interplay between oneself and another, I argue that the pandemic has shifted our relationship to other people through concealing the expressivity of the body. I conclude by considering how these aspects can challenge conventional ideas of phenomenology while also underscoring the necessity of a critical approach.

Feeling and performing ‘the crisis’: on the affective phenomenology and politics of the corona crisis

“…As an individual and collective crisis, the corona crisis has reshaped both our individual and our collective moods, and together with them our more specifically directed emotions, cognitions, and actions. This is attested to by the analyses cited above that describe our reactions to the corona pandemic in terms of existential feelings of uncanniness, anxiety, disorientation, loss of trust, and loneliness, and, especially, in terms of collective feelings, moods, or atmospheres rather than in terms of (individual) emotions (Aho, 2020 , 2022b ; Lopes, 2021 ; Ratcliffe, 2021 ; Trigg, 2022 ; Velasco et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Indeed, in the case of the corona pandemic, all these feelings have been observed (see, e.g., Froese et al, 2021 ). Especially, the pandemic has been described as a situation that has evoked a Heideggerian sense of uncanniness (Aho, 2020 ), anxiety (Trigg, 2022 ), collective disorientation (Ratcliffe, 2021 ; Velasco et al, 2021 ), loss of trust (Lopes, 2021 ), fear (Degerman et al, 2020 ), grief as a reaction to bereavement and other forms of loss (Richardson et al, 2021 ), and loneliness (Aho, 2022b ). Whereas some of these phenomena are emotions, others are more profound and often more encompassing and enduring; they are moods rather than emotions.…”

“…In cases like these, the affective states in question are indicative of both the fact that we are in a crisis and the kind of crisis we are in. The variety of affective reactions connected to the corona pandemic – reaching from fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, to nostalgia, grief, and loneliness, to anger and outrage – as well as the way our affective reactions are embodied and socially embedded (see, e.g., Aho, 2022b ; Degerman et al, 2020 ; Trigg, 2022 ) – especially in the case of a pandemic that both threatens our bodies and represents bodies as a threat – supports the conjecture that what we are dealing with in the case of the corona pandemic in fact is a plurality of crises.…”

Healing online? Social anxiety and emotion regulation in pandemic experience

“…Under the threat of Coronavirus disease, both our own and other people’s bodies became objects of attention and scrutiny as potential vectors of infection and in their vulnerability to illness, and this has often caused fear and intense worrying (cf. Dolezal, 2020 ; Trigg, 2022 ). In addition, many found the shift to online communication difficult, and have reported that relating to others via internet-enabled technology was tiring and draining, making them hyper-conscious and less spontaneous.…”