Long-COVID, mass disablement, and zombies

Long-COVID

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues but our national narratives shift away from a crisis mode to a “reconstruction” mode, millions of people’s lives have been forever changed by the virus. This makes it a crucial and urgent area of research.

How does philosophy contribute to scholarship about long-COVID?

Although longterm effects of pandemics are not new, this is the first time that affected people have named their shared condition. I want to examine the interplay between this epiphenomenon and the current healthcare systems in the UK. These systems are founded and propelled by eugenic premises that are haunting policies to this day. Philosophy is uniquely positioned to analyse thes conceptual foundations and their impact on social and political institutions.

Mass disablement

Disability communities that practice disability justice are clamouring for the recognition of long-COVID as a wave of global mass disablement, one of many to come. Between pandemics, natural disasters caused by global warming, and maiming caused by wars, the world is getting more and more disabled. I am studying long-COVID with this collective and relational lens.

Why disability justice and not disability rights?

I am aligning myself with the Black and brown, queer of colour art and activism movement of Disability Justice. Among other things, this movement demands an intersectional and anti-capitalist practice of disability advocacy. This means that it does not constrain itself to the assimilationist and respectability politics of liberal disability rights movements.

Zombies

Zombies are the abject reminder of our being-near-death and of alt-living in the most demystified and repulsive way. They are also an analogy for people who survive the apocalypse the “wrong” way. As such, they are a generative concept to think of people with long-COVID whose very existence and fundamental needs now clash with sociability “as usual”. In other words, zombies prompt us to rethink what civility means and who is deserving of healthcare.

How are zombies relevant?

Zombie lore has a rich and complex history. From the lone Caribbean zombi who haunts specific houses and plantations, to the zombi enslaved who obey their master, then to the white-washed slow and fast zombie hordes, this figure of the undead portrays essential human fears. Rooted in colonial fantasy and the fear of the other, zombies also call for a hygienic cleanse as they are usually managed with either moral murder or charitable cure. In this way, the figure of the zombie is extremely relevant as a reading of how our societies engage with disabled people, people whose lives are routinely deemed to be undesirable.