ABSTRACT

The global reality of the COVID-19/Corona pandemic paradoxically boosted national politics, broadcasting and citizenship. Media coverage, especially initially, praised citizen solidarity and the creative solutions that were pioneered to care for each other. A year later, a lasting social learning curve throughout and after this crisis seems illusory. The pandemic, this paper argues, needs to be understood in a longer timeframe as the working through and coming to terms with neo-liberal governmentality. The (often hilarious) early responses on social media provide a strong entry to do so. Our focus will be on the Netherlands which had a so-called ‘intelligent’ lockdown during the first wave of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020. Using the authors’ own sharing back and forth of toilet paper memes as a starting point, we aim to explore the notion of collective self-reflection and citizen co-education underlying both heated and simply ridiculous posts. Using previous discussion of cultural citizenship, this paper inquires into how pandemic citizenship played out as a vast exercise in disciplining and distinction through jokes and anger. The material suggests a nostalgic turn that might point to an implicitly voiced critique of neoliberal governmentality.

摘要

COVID-19/Corona 大流行的全球现实自相矛盾地推动了国家政治、广播和公民身份。媒体报道，尤其是最初，赞扬了公民团结和开创性的相互关心的创造性解决方案。一年后，在这场危机期间和之后持续的社会学习曲线似乎是虚幻的。本文认为，大流行需要在更长的时间范围内被理解为新自由主义政府主义的努力和接受。社交媒体上的（通常是搞笑的）早期反应提供了一个强有力的入口。我们的重点将放在荷兰，该国在 2020 年春季的第一波 COVID-19 疫情期间实施了所谓的“智能”封锁。以作者自己在卫生纸模因中的来回分享为起点，我们的目标是探索在激烈而荒谬的帖子背后的集体自我反思和公民共同教育的概念。利用之前对文化公民的讨论，本文探讨了流行病公民如何通过笑话和愤怒来进行纪律和区分的广泛练习。该材料暗示了一种怀旧的转变，可能指向对新自由主义治理术的含蓄批评。