The re-configuration of subjectivity during the pandemic: a thematic analysis of some literary texts on the border between humanistic geography and philosophy

Abstract

This article develops a reflection which considers geographical and philosophical discourse as contaminated interpretations, not as two separate and distinct areas. Humanistic geography is based on these assumptions: at its core is the analysis of the subjective value of the relationship between individuals and places. Starting from this framework, the article analyses the topos of the pandemic in The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Plague (1947) by Albert Camus, Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez alongside contemporary testimonies of the COVID-19 pandemic. This comparative analysis allows to examine the ongoing relevance of this literary for a wider reflection on the relationship between subject and object, between human beings and the world, on historical time, the indefinite past, and on the concept of space. In pandemic periods, temporality appears not as a process, but as a cyclical succession of recurring phases, as it lacks the experience of a transformation directed towards a future end. So, what is subjectivity in a fleeting and fragile space like that of pandemic confinement? To answer this question, the article’s analysis draws on the philosophical work of De Martino and Benjamin, linking them to the current pandemic crisis. What becomes clear, as the article demonstrates is a relationship of mutual co-implication between geography and philosophy, based on a re-configuration of subjectivity and on the relationship between subject and object.