Leave it to the lefties at Canadian Dimension to keep serving up these piping hot takes.
In a recent article, Yavar Hameed, a human rights lawyer and sessional lecturer at Carleton University’s Department of Law and Legal Studies, offers a critique of social distancing: cautioning us to be aware of its insidious intellectual history, and its dis-empowering effects in the present day.
He starts off by stating that the logic of social distancing is 'compelling' because it is based in science, promoted by trusted public health experts, and the advice is simple: isolation deters the the spread of the virus and it is temporary.
However, there is a lurking danger in the concept of social distancing which serves to alienate people in an already atomized world. Pushing people into echo-chambers of their own solipsism is merely an extension of the way that many people live in both real and virtual worlds. In this sense, we are already socially distant—the more pressing concern is understanding the broader impacts of forced spatial distancing, especially upon society’s most vulnerable.
This is certainly a problem that we have in modernity: though we are told how 'connected' we are via technology, we are more isolated than ever before. The data are in on rising feelings of loneliness, lack of fulfillment, dissolving social cohesion and community, and general unhappiness. People really have a sense that things are not going well.
Hameed, then, immediately springboards off of 'social distancing' and atomisation to a disucssion of the sociological concept of 'social distance'. He states:
While it should not be confused with the public health measures we are seeing today, “social distance” is a term whose intellectual roots lie in the discipline of urban sociology... [and the] theory of “urban ecology”... Extrapolated from plant biology, it argued that the “competition and equilibrium observed between plants provided a sufficient model for the interaction of social groups” in urban spaces... [and] rationalized physical separation based on personal preference for racial similarity (and related social activities) and an antipathy towards miscegenation... In this sense, “social distance” animated the creation of physical architecture and the spaces of urban living predicated on race, or the separation of certain individuals from socially devalued groups.
In its origin, therefore, there is something insidious and deeply troubling about the concept of “social distance” and its implications for the material and ideological maintenance of human networks and the rights, responsibilities, and protections they offer.
Hameed also stresses that instead of using the term 'social distancing' we should move to use 'spatial distancing' in order to understand that distance between us in space, ought not translate to the distance between us in social connection.
Where to begin...
One cannot preface their statement with 'while X should not be confused with Y' and then go on to confuse X with Y.
This whole thing is based on a big fat equivocation between 'social distance' - the amount of differential preference and 'intimacy' social groups have with other social groups - and 'social distancing' - the physical act of remaining 2 meters away from other people.
I can understand the move to emphasise 'spatial distancing' instead of 'social distancing'; but c'mon: one cannot spatially distance themselves from others unless they're socially proximal. This point is fairly big brained rhetoric for us knuckledraggers who need to understand the difference between geographic distance and emotional distance. I jest: everyone knows about the phenomenon wherein a relationship one person becomes 'distant' - that doesn't mean that the person is farther away from you all the way over there, it means that they're aloof or emotionally disconnected. One of the main concerns that people have about social distancing is how they'll maintain the connections with people they love, or the more vulnerable. People aren't likely to feel more reassured about their predicament or feel inclined to do more outreach because of this rhetorical tip of the hat.
And the change in people isn't likely to happen because nothing is really changing. It is a trick. What's happened is that they've taken the current phenomenon of 'social distancing' and poisoned the well by linking it to an over-simplified eva luation of the concept of 'social distance', which they've deemed racist. Having sufficiently tainted 'social distancing' in the minds of readers, they offer an alternative to 'social distancing' called 'spatial distancing' in a shallow attempt to implant the notion that though we have to remain physically distant, we can yet remain emotionally and socially connected. This helps to make them out to be the good guys in relation to the status quo that they've constructed via their cherry-picking.
And the change in people isn't likely to happen because nothing is really changing. It is a trick. What's happened is that they've taken the current phenomenon of 'social distancing' and poisoned the well by linking it to an over-simplified eva luation of the concept of 'social distance', which they've deemed racist. Having sufficiently tainted 'social distancing' in the minds of readers, they offer an alternative to 'social distancing' called 'spatial distancing' in a shallow attempt to implant the notion that though we have to remain physically distant, we can yet remain emotionally and socially connected. This helps to make them out to be the good guys in relation to the status quo that they've constructed via their cherry-picking.
I also agree with the concern about further atomisation, but calling out a concept (social distance) in order to bring attention to another practice (social distancing) seems like a cheap analogy. We've already been told, again and again, that 'racism' and 'xenophobia' are 'viruses' spreading alongside this Coronavirus - this analogy is but more of the same. If it helps you raise you consciousness, then fine. But one should also be sharp enough to realise the bullshit... because there is bullshit to come.
Hameed goes on to quote from queer liberation and anti-capitalist activist, Gary Kinsman, stating that '[s]pace is not a neutral zone; it is the battleground for ideological contests and the enforcement of normative patterns which dispossess rather than foster community.' I agree, somewhat. Space isn't as neutral as one would like: public space isn't just public. Try sleeping outside in a park and you'll see the regulatory forces come out. Try having a demonstration against Drag Queen Story Hour - we've seen snipers atop buildings in the US keeping an eye on such things.
And that's why I detest the Left: they control the spaces for discourse, analysis, intellectual formation, rebellion, and finally, developing alternative ways of living, as well as the acceptable range of discussion - and they refuse to believe that they do. Gary Kinsman, after all, is founder of 'Gays and Lesbians Against the Right Everywhere', as well as the 'Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee of Toronto'. So, if you are on the Right, anywhere; Kinsman and his gaggle of gender deviants will be against you. And that gets me thinking a little about their motivations... It appears to be as much 'for' as it is 'against'.
Do you recall when 'Pride' was just 'Pride day'? Now we have Pride Month wherein corporations and governments don the technicolour rainbow to bedazzle onlookers with their inclusion and 'commitment' to equality, and yet, the LGBT folks still claim victim-status and harangue those who aren't sufficiently on board - even going as far as descending upon small rural towns with their Pride marches. I find it somewhat predatory and imposing.
Do you recall when 'Pride' was just 'Pride day'? Now we have Pride Month wherein corporations and governments don the technicolour rainbow to bedazzle onlookers with their inclusion and 'commitment' to equality, and yet, the LGBT folks still claim victim-status and harangue those who aren't sufficiently on board - even going as far as descending upon small rural towns with their Pride marches. I find it somewhat predatory and imposing.
But I digress, somewhat.
What I mean to get at is that the Left is equivocating, again by calling the imperatives for 'social distancing' just another part of the 'ideological spatial war of dispossession'. That's not what is happening.
Social distancing is being recommended because it is an easy, cheap, achievable first-line-of-defence against a contagious viral spread. It is NOT being recommended in order to dispossess people and to atomise people - though these could be after-effects, and it is up to us to make sure that doesn't happen. After all, if we disagree with some government approach or other, we cannot gather, demonstrate, protest, march, and the like. We can't even gather in groups to discuss productive alternatives and figure out ways to help people in need - but that is baked into the nature of the crisis. So, unless this author wishes to deny that there is, indeed, a crisis afoot, and that the crisis isn't adequately addressed via social distancing, this criticism of social distancing, with its insidious intellectual history and dis-empowering effects, seems to be about something else... and what that 'something else' is happens to be what the Left wants for itself: control of and access to 'space' into to engage in the 'ideological spatial war of dispossession'. They think that social distancing is being used in an ideological war because that's what they're doing, or wish to do, and they are trying to fashion the social distancing phenomenon into another ideological lens in the prism for people to view the world through. Hence the appeal to the intellectual history of 'social distance', the link made between social distance and social distancing, and the final quick and easy shift from social distance to spatial distance.
They have no problem dispossessing people. They have no problem doxxing their enemies, going after their jobs, threatening their lives and families, and harassing them online and in-person. The Left wants control. They have no problem 'dispossessing' those they oppose, and freeing up those with whom they align, and Coronavirus is being utilised for all sorts of seemingly incompatible desires. For instance, the Left is calling for the release of prisoners because they're more likely to catch the virus whilst in prison, and yet they also advocate for the continued entry and assistance for immigrants and asylum seekers. How do these compute with the moves to contain the spread of the virus? I suppose the migrants are to be released, too.
There are many groups that are taking advantage of this pandemic, and it is important, however, to see who is acting as a conduit for the power that brought us here.
There are those who are willing become martyrs for the GDP; there are those who argue for a return the neo-liberal status quo whilst footing the blame solely on China; there are also those who continue to espouse the enforcement of PC diktats; and there are the technocrats who are attempting to justify a shift towards socialism because of China's apparent success at dealing with the virus, meanwhile law enforcement drones are soaring through the skies to identify and fine citizens walking in the countryside.
The most damning thing for our establishments - from news media to government officials - will have to be the decisions they made from January to mid-March, and they must all be held to account, and heads must roll. It is not only their fundamental lack of leadership, but this lack of leadership has been married to allegiances to corrosive and unsustainable ideas for the shaping of our societies.
Again, there are many groups trying to gain from this pandemic - and many of them are stuck trying to get their paradigms up and running, again, and those would lead back to this sort of situation. Folks are taking the opportunities they can, and are trying not to let a good crisis go to waste.
They have no problem dispossessing people. They have no problem doxxing their enemies, going after their jobs, threatening their lives and families, and harassing them online and in-person. The Left wants control. They have no problem 'dispossessing' those they oppose, and freeing up those with whom they align, and Coronavirus is being utilised for all sorts of seemingly incompatible desires. For instance, the Left is calling for the release of prisoners because they're more likely to catch the virus whilst in prison, and yet they also advocate for the continued entry and assistance for immigrants and asylum seekers. How do these compute with the moves to contain the spread of the virus? I suppose the migrants are to be released, too.
There are many groups that are taking advantage of this pandemic, and it is important, however, to see who is acting as a conduit for the power that brought us here.
There are those who are willing become martyrs for the GDP; there are those who argue for a return the neo-liberal status quo whilst footing the blame solely on China; there are also those who continue to espouse the enforcement of PC diktats; and there are the technocrats who are attempting to justify a shift towards socialism because of China's apparent success at dealing with the virus, meanwhile law enforcement drones are soaring through the skies to identify and fine citizens walking in the countryside.
The most damning thing for our establishments - from news media to government officials - will have to be the decisions they made from January to mid-March, and they must all be held to account, and heads must roll. It is not only their fundamental lack of leadership, but this lack of leadership has been married to allegiances to corrosive and unsustainable ideas for the shaping of our societies.
Again, there are many groups trying to gain from this pandemic - and many of them are stuck trying to get their paradigms up and running, again, and those would lead back to this sort of situation. Folks are taking the opportunities they can, and are trying not to let a good crisis go to waste.
But of course they side with their own, and fight against their enemies: such is the nature of a war.
Yes.
So get used to the idea that you are in one.
