ABSTRACT

Can the “social” aspect of “social distancing” reinvent segregation? This has become an urgent question as a new era dawns in the organization of public behaviour. As touch reoccupies its central role in defining sociality, a raft of social regulations go hand-in-hand with the promise of a new sanitized and touchless existence. Both are designed to keep “us” at distance from the new frontlines of “them”: produce barriers that keep at bay a contaminating amalgam of essential service workers, urban protesters and migrants. Recent work in India around the practice of caste explores a complex phenomenology of touch, how it works, what it means, and how it is systematized to define an Other, that may have larger relevance in the barricades of protection we see everywhere in the pandemic. We may also see a resistance to a globalized unitary order defined by the possible return of radical touch: in the return to offline, in physicality of Occupy movements, and in new political and economic frontlines that might also see the rebirth of the proverbial untouchable.

摘要

“社会疏远”的“社会”方面是否可以重塑隔离？随着新时代的公共行为组织的到来，这已经成为一个紧迫的问题。作为触摸在定义社会性方面重新发挥了中心作用，一系列社会法规与新的经过净化和无接触的生活并存。两者的目的都是使“我们”与“他们”的新前沿保持一定距离：制造障碍物，使基本服务工人，城市抗议者和移民受到污染。印度围绕种姓实践的最新工作探讨了一种复杂的触觉现象学，它的工作原理，含义以及如何系统化地定义“他人”，这可能与我们在大流行中到处可见的保护壁垒具有更大的相关性。 。我们也可能会看到由激进主义的可能回归所定义的对全球化一元秩序的抵制：在离线状态下，在占领运动的实体上，在新的政治和经济前沿中，这也可能使谚语重生变得平淡无奇。