The Pandemic and Its Shadow. Feminist Theoretical and Art Discourses on Trauma and Community in COVID-19

This article explores the philosophical and psychoanalytic trajectories of conceptualizing Covid-19 pandemic as ‘collective trauma’, considers what would be risks, but also productive possibilities, such a theoretical move. context this inquiry is so-called ‘shadow pandemic’ – drastic increase in domestic violence globally, which accompanied introduction lockdowns measure containing impact on public health infrastructures. For women who were victims during lockdowns, discourse ‘sheltering’, ‘isolation’ ‘staying home’ has carried antithetical meanings to o6cially sanctioned ones those threat, danger, harm, death. Drawing work two feminist thinkers, Julia Kristeva Jacqueline Rose, installations by bio-artists Anna Dumitriu Flo Kasearu, I argue against notions an external traumatic event that disrupted societies communities worldwide. Rather, suggest there more complex, even intimate, relation between pandemic, violence, gendered productions sociality.