我好無聊之COVID-19 Journal。
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20200304
不要笑我，但我最近才有機會看 #我們與惡的距離，覺得好好看，好幾段都QQ。哈哈哈哈哈！
20200305
#Coronavirusporn 這太酷了吧，人類的慾望果然充滿想像力和創造力啊！
這感覺很像早年對抗愛滋肆虐，G片大廠紛紛透過 #condomporn 潛移默化宣導「戴套也很爽」，和前陣子透過A片再現大難當頭也要打炮的 #refugeeporn，號稱「再慘也得爽」。
當然，重點在故事情節的時代脈絡，也在物的情慾化，更在人際互動中權力關係之展現。
前者在PrEP發明之後，大家也開始戴起各式各樣的東西（連破掉的保險套都成為category），但就是不怎麼好好戴套了；後者則是出現各式各樣的難民，互相使喚、喝斥，但就是要有頭巾和傷口紗布（對 sexualise 特定宗教、特定人群的目的也不言而喻）。
20200308
These two books seem very interesting (particularly the first one)!!!
#StrangeTrips: Science, Culture, and the Regulation of Drug (#LucasRichert, 2019)
#Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic (#MikeJay, 2019)
20200310
我想到前陣子為了備課，發現英格蘭許多地方欲將 #厭女 列為 #hatecrime 或 #hatespeech 的提案，還看了這個關於 #incels 紀錄片（https://www.bbc.co.uk/…/29/inside-the-secret-world-of-incels），就會深刻感受到厭女群體中，厭的不一定是「女」，而是不斷反抗、成長的弱勢者。
歷史上的失語者，透過賦權、解放，而開始擁有自己的聲音和語彙，震耳欲聾的力道反而讓聽者失聰了——但聽者，也是複數的，失聰的通常是其中相對弱勢的，因此如何協助他們找回傾聽、理解、反抗、結盟的能力，似乎也是重要的任務。（為什麼每次結論都是女性主義者的任務，我也覺得很煩 XD）
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「我們要認知到：所有故事都是片面的。我們無法說出完整的真相，但是不是就不談了？不是，相反地，我們應該持續地說，不斷不斷地用新的敘事推翻前一個敘事。」
乍看之下，網路平台似與上述「退一步」、「慢下來」、「再反思」的邏輯全然相悖，然而王曉丹建議我們換個角度看待它的零碎、片段與超速，「網路世界不斷敘事、覆蓋與洗去的特質，其實也可以說是一種延遲，一種判斷的後退。但關鍵是，我們如何讓網路世界對推動性平有利？」
如今的婦運是複數的，每個人都可以在做自己的同時，對性別平等做出貢獻。
20200312
“According to Gurminder Bhambra, co-editor of Decolonising the University, decolonisation repositions colonialism, empire and racism as foundational to the current state and study of the world, making what has been rendered invisible, visible, i.e. the historical and geographical meanings of our epistemologies and their representations.
By acknowledging these epistemic absences and violences, decolonisation offers to the university, and the world, alternative ways of thinking about the effects of power differentials in knowledge production, transmission and exchange. Decolonisation offers an avenue to disrupt historically and geographically racialised and hierarchised epistemic hegemonies.”
20200314
No testing, no results, no panic. 然後我就想起這本書了：Metrics: What Counts in Global Health (ed. Vincanne Adams, 2016)。
In the time of ‘pandemic’, what’s more important for the governments and forms of govern/mentality is how to produce or not produce evidence and epidemiological knowledge.
Metrics: What Counts in Global Health By Vincanne Adams
20200314
罷工＋疫情，大概唯一唯一的好處就是能肆無忌憚地追劇吧——看完《#我們與惡的距離》，又陸陸續續追完《#想見你》跟《#噬罪者》。
這幾部，劇情跟演員都很不錯耶，也太好看了吧～
20200317
I’m quite looking forward to this book. Things need to be changed, in many situs including the activism itself.
Me, not you: The trouble with mainstream feminism (Alison Phipps, 2020)
20200318
亮瑜大大的文章《英國「佛系防疫」思維：延緩醫療崩潰、降低經濟衝擊》，這應該是最近討論英國 #佛系防疫 中最令人耳目一新的了。
評論防疫措施或一國的衛生系統，不能只是憑感覺（通常是自己和身邊的人恐慌的程度）或依政治風向臆測，這樣很容易忽略政策本人的動態性——及其本身需要經過一系列「正當化」（legitimation）的過程——至少還包括法律和科學的面向。
因此這篇文章不單單從結果討論結果（變成套套邏輯），而去看正當化的時候用的證據和rationales，反而有空間去思考 #evidencebased 或 evidence-informed public health的能力及「功能」（其所能為或不能為之事）。
20200319
* Virus: all that is solid melts in the air (Boaventura De Sousa Santos, 2020)
In every historical era, the dominant modes of living (work, consumption, leisure, coexistence) and of hastening or holding off death are relatively rigid and appear to stem from rules etched in the stone of human nature. These modes keep changing little by little, so the changes tend to go unnoticed.
The outbreak of a pandemic is incompatible with this type of change. It calls for dramatic changes, which become possible from one moment to the next, as if that possibility had been there all along.
It is suddenly possible for you to stay at home and again find the time to read a book or spend more time with your children, to consume less, forgo the addiction of whiling away the time in shopping centres, eyeing what is for sale while forgetting all the things that you desire but which cannot be bought.
The conservative notion that there is no alternative to the mode of life forced on us by hypercapitalism collapses. It becomes evident that the reason there are no alternatives is because the democratic political system has been shaped into abandoning any consideration of alternatives.
Having been expelled from the political system, the alternatives are increasingly bound to enter the lives of citizens through the back door of pandemic crises, environmental disasters and financial collapses. To put it differently, the alternatives are bound to come back in the worst possible manner.
The apparent rigidity of social solutions generates an odd sense of security among the classes benefiting the most from them. There remains always, of course, some measure of insecurity, but there are means and resources available to allay it, whether in the form of healthcare, insurance policies, services provided by private security companies, psychotherapy, or gyms.
This sense of security gets mixed with feelings of arrogance and even condemnation toward all those who feel victimized by these very social solutions.
The viral outbreak interrupts this common sense and causes the sense of security to melt overnight. We know that the pandemic is not blind and that it has its preferred targets. With it, however, a common awareness of planetary, democratic-like communion is somehow being created.
That is actually the etymological root of the word “pandemic”: all people. The tragedy is that, in the present case, the best way to show solidarity with one another is to isolate yourself and refrain from even touching others. It is certainly an odd communion of fortunes. Will any alternatives be possible?
20200321
* Why We Buy Weird Things in Times of Crisis (STEPHEN E. NASH, 2020) Interesting!
‘[T]oilet paper is an artifact—a technology—with a fascinating history. To make a long story short, TP didn’t become common in the United States until the 1920s, when the Hoberg Paper Company marketed Charmin to women, emphasizing its softness and femininity.
[T]oday’s frantic TP-buying phenomenon interesting for another reason too: It seems to have become an act of identity construction, a way of defining ourselves as individuals and as a group.
A good friend of mine recently posted a tongue-in-cheek photo of himself holding a newly acquired 40-roll case of toilet paper on his right shoulder, like a modern-day Atlas, the Greek Titan, upholding the terrestrial sphere. He was just being funny. But an anthropologist like me might observe that in so doing, my friend publicly displayed his resourcefulness, social status, economic power, and ability to provide for his family.
With apologies to Thorstein Veblen, the sociologist and economist who in 1899 coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to explain the purchase and display of luxury items among the very rich, I would argue that my friend engaged in a digital, middle-class act of conspicuous consumption to demonstrate his economic virility in a time of crisis.’
20200322
* ‘Wash Our Hands? Some People Can’t Wash Their Kids for a Week.’ (Evan Hill & Yousur Al-Hlou, 2020)
When we are complaining about and making fun of preventive measures such as #handwashing and #socialdistancing, we already live too comfortably. It’s hard to imagine how people live with the scarcity of clean and drinking water and/or in very crowded places, and some of them are not necessarily far away in other countries.
20200323
Good call from the UN S-G #AntonioGueterres (wondering how many would take it seriously, though):
The United Nations has been trying to mediate an end to conflicts in countries including Syria, Yemen and Libya, while also providing humanitarian assistance to millions of civilians.
Guterres warned that in war-torn countries health systems have collapsed and the small number of health professionals left were often targeted in the fighting.
“End the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world,” he said. “It starts by stopping the fighting everywhere. Now. That is what our human family needs, now more than ever.”
20200324
* Coronavirus: Mirror of an ‘Examined life’ (Suraj Gogoi, 2020)
These days I’ve been thinking about #IvanIllich too. Yet, rather than #MedicalNemesis, which can be a little bit too obvious, I’m actually thinking to revisit #ToolsForConviviality. In so-called postindustrial societies, ‘modernized poverty’ has made the pandemic inherently discriminatory and yet justified, nonetheless.
Assuming the current situation irreversible and somehow inevitable, what could be an alternative in this context – any option for #prefigurativepolitics drawing on the explosion of analyses, critiques, and reflections over these months?
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A quick glance at the pandemic Spanish flu in 1918-19 will show us similar behaviour from people—of ignorance and disobedience. Ignorance is not something which is specific to a culture or ethnicity. The state of San Francisco in the United States during the pandemic flu imposed a compulsory order to wear a mask. Wearing it was considered a duty. Many of them disobeyed the order and were arrested and subsequently fined for their refusal. A small anti-mask league was formed to oppose such an official decree.
Such health-related policing is not new. Health as a qualitative norm, notes Ivan Illich Illich (1992), goes back to the emergence of the nation-states. It was a norm for the armies, and in the 19th century with the growth of capitalism and mercantile economy we see this emphasis being imposed on the workers and mothers. Illich adds that health began as a duty and entitlement, later ‘transmogrified into a pressing need’.
20200325
英國政府提出的 Coronavirus Bill 長達329頁，共計87個條文以及27個 schedules，詳細規範了面對 Covid-19 疫情政府管制措施所需要法律授權基礎及相應的立法監督機制。
The Bill [UK Constitutional law experts on the Coronavirus Bill] is of course a fast-tracked measure. The Committee has been critical of this process and of its increased usage in recent times. However, in noting that this procedure is acceptable “only in exceptional circumstances and with the agreement of the usual channels”, the Committee concludes: “The coronavirus pandemic fulfils these criteria”.
A danger with emergency legislation, particularly when it is fast-tracked and denied adequate parliamentary scrutiny, is that it is then difficult to remove from the books. The published Bill had a sunset clause of two years, extendable by six months (clause 75). The Government agreed to an amendment, to the effect that its powers expire after six months, any subsequent renewal falling subject to Parliament’s consent.
Also, a number of measures in the Bill are subject to more restrictive sunset provisions, while the Bill further provides for the possibility of early repeal. The Committee concludes: “The inclusion of sunset provisions in the Bill is essential. Two years would have been too long for these powers to have operated without re-approval by Parliament and we welcome the cross-party agreement to reduce the period to six months.”
20200327
I can already imagine that some people would make a hell of fun of this statement as being overly “idealistic”, “unfeasible”, and “impractical”, but what they would simultaneously miss is the gesture of setting up a normative foundation for whatever potential rights claims would need in the future.
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UN Experts, led by Dainius Puras, special rapporteur on the right to health, have joined together to issue a statement titled, No exceptions with COVID-19: “Everyone has the right to life-saving interventions”.
The COVID-19 crisis cannot be solved with public health and emergency measures only; all other human rights must be addressed too, the 38 UN human rights experts state in their release. “Everyone, without exception, has the right to life-saving interventions and this responsibility lies with the government. The scarcity of resources or the use of public or private insurance schemes should never be a justification to discriminate against certain groups of patients,” the experts said. “Everybody has the right to health.” Advances in biomedical sciences are very important to realize the right to health. But equally important are all human rights. The principles of non-discrimination, participation, empowerment and accountability need to be applied to all health-related policies.”
20200327
Wow – it’s online now!
“We are delighted to announce the virtual launch of a new archive site, #TheDeleuzeSeminars (deleuze.cla.purdue.edu), devoted to the work of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995).”
20200328
* Pandemics and Health Emergencies: A Teach-In
Academically, this is by far the most useful and interesting blog piece (by Prof #SophieHarman, 2020) among all what I’ve read lately (not much, in fact 😬). And this paragraph makes me laugh 🤣 – ‘fair enough’, I think, agreeingly:
“The #InternationalHealthRegulations (#IHR) are the backbone of global health security and disease surveillance. Personally, I find them super boring, but you have to understand them to be allowed to say that. However, if you are interested in #internationallaw, then you should read up on them as they are one of the more important and powerful sources of law in the international system. The Fidler reading is long (so says every student I made read it) but it has all the background and technical detail you need.”
20200329
Oh WOW – interesting! Thanks for sharing Isaac. This might be the first time that the WHO uses its media outlet formally responding to the #TaiwanParadox.
“In a recent interview, the WHO official who headed the joint international mission to China, did not answer a question on Taiwan’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The question of Taiwanese membership in WHO is up to WHO Member States, not WHO staff. However, WHO is working closely with all health authorities who are facing the current coronavirus pandemic, including Taiwanese health experts.
The Taiwanese caseload is low relative to population. We continue to follow developments closely. WHO is taking lessons learned from all areas, including Taiwanese health authorities, to share best practices globally.”
20200330
Lately I don’t have any picture other than me eating or cooking 😱
20200331
#sodomylaw remains in Singapore ☹
A disappointing development from Singapore, as the High Court dismissed three legal challenges to the colonial-era law defining sex between consenting men as “acts of gross indecency”
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