Towards a relational ethics in pandemic times and beyond: Limited accountability, collective performativity and new subjectivity

Abstract

It is often said that desperate times call for desperate measures. Yet, in the contemporary pandemic crisis, desperate organizational measures seem all but present. Instead, for most of us it is ‘business as usual’ while we are at the same time required to take care of our kids. The situation makes us highly uncomfortable and overwhelms many of us with feelings of stress — when trying to keep on going with the flow — or feelings of guilt — when just not being able to juggle all the different things. In this short piece, I draw on a personal vignette to first theorize how the pandemic crisis leverages the constitution of a masculine subjectivity and, so doing, further increases the ontological struggle in the constitution of a female subjectivity under neoliberal governance. In a second instance, I turn to an email sent by my PhD supervisor to illustrate how a relational ethics, recognizing the openness and generosity in the relation, and collective performativity can lower the ethical burden we face. I conclude by arguing that such an alternative script and the subjectivity fostered through it is urgently needed, not only today in pandemic times, but also in times beyond.

‘All the single ladies’ as the ideal academic during times of COVID‐19?

“…During the lockdown, scholars who are mothers struggle to get any work done and feel guilty towards their kids when they finally sit down to work (Ahmad, 2020a;De Coster, 2020). The question thus becomes: will you accept my struggle as legitimate when it strays from this normative perception of what the struggles of 'women' in their work lives presumably concern?…”

“…In this text, based on my experience and gender scholarship, I discuss the relationship between two issuesacademic productivity and work-life balancein the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This may not seem particularly inventive as these topics have been extensively covered in the media (e.g., Ahmad, 2020a;Jenkins, 2020;Minello, 2020), which I have followed closely, as well as in other contributions to the Gender, Work and Organization Feminist Frontiers section (Boncori, 2020;De Coster, 2020). Still, I believe that I occupy a hitherto generally overlooked position from which to approach these issues, namely, that I am single and live alone.…”

Um Olhar Sociológico Sobre a Crise Covid-19 em Livro

“…Para construir essa cultura, que tem também de ser inclusiva e igualitária, podemos usar como ponto de partida, motivação e modelo algumas das experiências causadas pela pandemia: por exemplo, a constatação da nossa vulnerabilidade (física, emocional, social, institucional, etc.) (De Coster, 2020; Guy e Arthur, 2020); a consciência das relações de interdependência que nos ligam a outras pessoas (relações tantas vezes invisibilizadas num regime que assume que os sujeitos são autónomos e que o sucesso é individual) (Clavijo, 2020;De Coster, 2020;Dobusch e Kreissl, 2020;Pereira et al, 2020); a compreensão do impacto e importância do corpo e das emoções (e do seu bem-estar) no trabalho científico (Bebiano, 2020;Clavijo, 2020); os laços de solidariedade gerados pela experiência coletiva de adversidade (Boncori, 2020; Matthewman e Huppatz, 2020); a criatividade gerada por uma crise que veio demonstrar que outras práticas e relações são possíveis (Matthewman e Huppatz, 2020); e a consciência da importância que o chamado trabalho doméstico académico (e as pessoas que o fazem) tem no funcionamento das universidades (Motta, 2020). Promover uma ética do cuidado implica, na prática, transformar uma série de práticas e procedimentos, como por exemplo: prioritizing collective rather than individual goals (…).…”

Privileged yet vulnerable: Shared memories of a deeply gendered lockdown

“…The impossibility of being able to fulfill all responsibilities manifest in overwhelming guilt for all of us. This guilt is an experience shared by women academics (De Coster, 2020), and indeed is the result of “an unattainable task which results inevitably in ethical failure—because the inability to effectively do the right thing in all these relations—and an ontological struggle” (De Coster, 2020, p. 748).…”