The Spatiality of Covid-19 Pandemic: Revisiting Foucault

Abstract

            The statement “man, as if were, a prosthetic God” by Freud has been dominating the humanity since the dawn of the modern period which privileged man over the rest of the species. Nonetheless, with the Covid-19 global pandemic, the privilege that humans enjoyed over the species of earth was shattered which wreaked havoc not only in the lives of people but also the very cultural fabric of the society. Michel Foucault talked about the measures taken by the officials in the 17^th Century to contain the plague and the role of various institutions in the society and this paper conceives the idea of society during the time of pandemic as envisioned by Foucault. This paper also tries to explore the impact of Covid-19 on the socio-cultural aspect of the society by undertaking the spatial theory to analyze the relationship between the spaces like hospitals, home, public spaces and how these spaces shape and define the subjects residing in those respective spaces. This paper also focuses on the spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeaue along with the concept of heterotopia of Michel Foucault in the context of the pandemic. According to Certeau, it is the people who give meanings to the space but other theorists such as Lefebvre and Soja suggest that the space and the people are involved in the production of meanings. This paper analyses the dynamics of the subjects placed in different spaces such as the hospitals(patients and the health care officials), containment zone(quarantined), public space (“normal” ), liminal space,  and the institutions of power.