A swimming pool is never just water. It’s a heavily managed aquatic ecosystem, held in precarious balance by chemistry, cultural norms, and care. Without treatment, pools explode with algae, bacteria, protozoa, and fungi, not to mention insects. Chlorination, the standard treatment worldwide, reshapes that multispecies world: it kills off some life forms while allowing chlorine-resistant […]
Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis murdered nearly 300,000 disabled people: in gas chambers, by poison or overdose, or simply by leaving them to starve (Herzog 2025, 1). Epileptics, wheelchair users, the mentally ill, and the intellectually disabled were targeted. But what mattered most was whether a person could work. Those who were killed were […]
The 2022 Mpox outbreak in the Global North disrupted the temporality of epidemics amid an uncertain recovery from COVID-19. Immediately associated with men who have sex with men, the outbreak interpellated the queer communities into action—for example, through participation in vaccination campaigns—and reactivated the collective memory of HIV/AIDS. This outbreak thus revealed an intricate form […]
Part of a series discussing Romani Chronicles of Covid-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience, edited by Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta (Berghahn: New York and Oxford, 2023). We decided to put together Romani Chronicles of COVID-19 during the Great Quarantine of 2020 (Boellstorff, 2020) when, like so many others, we were overwhelmed by the […]
Part of a series discussing Romani Chronicles of Covid-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience, edited by Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta (Berghahn: New York and Oxford, 2023). As I sit down to write these words in Glasgow, Scotland, in July 2024, the news is still dominated by the enduring spectre of COVID-19. The UK […]
Part of a series discussing Romani Chronicles of Covid-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience, edited by Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta (Berghahn: New York and Oxford, 2023). On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) before later announcing the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic on […]
Part of a series discussing Romani Chronicles of Covid-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience, edited by Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta (Berghahn: New York and Oxford, 2023). Romani Chronicles of COVID-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience is an admirable and personal account not only of various Roma peoples’ resilience and tenacity but also of […]
Part of a series discussing Romani Chronicles of Covid-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience, edited by Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta (Berghahn: New York and Oxford, 2023). Prologue As a child, I used to hide under the long colourful skirts worn by my mother. Thinking this was my place in the world, I […]
Part of a series discussing Romani Chronicles of Covid-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience, edited by Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta (Berghahn: New York and Oxford, 2023). Covid-19 is a pandemic that has to be approached as syndemic. This is what Yasar Abu Ghosh convincingly argues in this deeply disturbing and profoundly illuminating […]
Part of a series discussing Romani Chronicles of Covid-19: Testimonies of Harm and Resilience, edited by Paloma Gay y Blasco and Martin Fotta (Berghahn: New York and Oxford, 2023). Anthropological histories of the COVID-19 pandemic exceed the virus and epidemiological trends. Although its catastrophes have escalated globally, they have not unfolded homogeneously. The intensities and […]
Introduction Days before his death, Ernest Becker wrote with remarkable clarity on the human dishonesty around death. “The basic human predicament,” Becker submits, is “that we are simultaneously worms and gods.” All our symbolic constructs—the book projects, Instagram reels, religious convictions, and romantic gestures—serve the singular purpose of repudiating the fact of our own finitude. […]
