Non-representational approaches to COVID-19

Abstract

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 during the COVID-19 pandemic in the South of England, UK. Next, we offer some theoretical suggestions, guiding the reader through an ‘ABC’ of non-representational concepts including absent presence, affect, atmospheres, bodily knowledges and corporeogeographies, 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 non-representational thinking and doing. We conclude by speculating ourselves on the ways that the pandemic has refigured and reconstituted our own bodily boundaries and knowledges, affective and felt experiences in public spaces and everyday encounters and routines.