The viral politics of masks: pandemic resistance and ontological performance

Abstract

ABSTRACT 2020 may well become known as the year of the mask, harkening to an omnipresent threat of molecular contagion and trans-corporeal intermingling. This article traces the ways in which bodies materially relate and co-constituted one another over the course of the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Highlighting the role of a virus in reshaping human social interaction and “self”-presentation, “everyday performance” with face-masks is posited as a way of simultaneously altering material processes of contagion while making perceptible the ethical relations and commitments that shape these processes.