The Frustration of a Subject in Narratives of “Covid Diaries”

Abstract

During the pandemic of COVID-19 governments of most countries around the world imposed significant limitations for the freedom of movement and social contacts, which became a source of psycho-emotional issues for some social groups even when there were no noticeable financial consequences of the quarantine. Based on the covid diaries by Russian-speaking scholars in humanities, the article proposes an explanation for the negative reaction of authors to the situation of pandemic from the point of view of neoliberal subjectivity characteristics outlined by Dardot and Laval, within the framework of state of emergency theory by Giorgio Agamben. The research was not focused on socio-economic changes caused by the global quarantine, but on deconstructing the norms and subjectivity features exposed in narratives of covid diaries in response to repressive calls of the pandemic. The discourse analysis method by Potter and Wetherell allows to reveal diaries authors’ attitude regarding the situation and allow to separate it from alternative competing models of reality, while justifying authors’ reaction to what’s going on. There are four interpretative repertoires that are extracted from the discourse analysis of diaries: a repertoire of using space, of managing time, of socialization priorities and of self-care. The analysis shows that the main sources of psycho-emotional issues for the considered social profile were frustration caused by impossibility to implement neoliberal imperatives of high productivity and consumer variety, anxiety caused by the bio-political repressions of the governments and fear of coronavirus.