Open AccessDiscourse and body: discursive and bodily practices in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
Author(s) -
Alexandru Cosmescu
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
revista de filozofie, sociologie şi ştiinţe politice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2587-4160
pISSN - 1857-2294
DOI - 10.53783/18572294.21.187.13
Subject(s) - embodied cognition , subject (documents) , context (archaeology) , feeling , affection , face (sociological concept) , sociology , epistemology , subjectivity , relation (database) , politics , aesthetics , field (mathematics) , psychology , philosophy , political science , history , social science , law , mathematics , archaeology , database , library science , computer science , pure mathematics
In the present paper, based on two articles by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, I develop an analysis of discursive ethics and bodily practices in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the face of an insistance on an officially approved mode of discourse, a form of parrhesia becomes necessary as a way of the speaking subject to become aware of their own speech and to reclaim it. This involves both a certain urgency of speech and a commitment towards truth – which, recently, has been replaced by a misunderstood notion of “fact” – reevaluating the role both of philosophical discourse and of the poetic one. In the face of a modified relation to the body, that risks depriving it of the possibility of constituting itself as a sensible subject through intersubjective touch, a new set of bodily practices become necessary in order to conect with self-affection and touch as basic aspects that constitute the embodied subject. These can involve both certain forms of mindfulness – becoming aware of the body as the field of feeling – and practices of intercorporeal relating. These practices become intrinsically political