Pandemic Life-lines: A Multimodal Autoethnography of COVID-19 Illness, Isolation, and Shared Immunities

Filipe, Angela

Abstract

As a crosscutting concept in biology, anthropology, and philosophy, immunity has been a critical ‘site’ of debate on the relations between self and other, organism and environment, risk and responsibility, the corporeal and the political. In this Research Article, I trace how these relations and everyday life during the COVID-19 pandemic relied on a web of coordinated—and sometimes unexpected—lines of communication, restriction, and solidarity. Using an experimental approach that combines multimodal autoethnography and multiscalar relational analysis, I present a first-person account of travelling during, testing for, and falling ill and isolating with COVID-19 in late 2021. I explore how pandemic life-lines, including public health measures, vaccinations, devices, and helplines, as well as mundane gestures of care and ecologies of support, acted together as shared immunities. In this exploration, I propose to reconceptualise ‘immunity’ as a process network rather than a defence apparatus, shedding light on how these life-lines may influence differential trajectories of disease and healing. To conclude, I discuss how my conceptual and methodological approach contributes to a social ecological understanding of immunity, that goes beyond the biopolitical, in times of pandemic and in the future.

Citation

Filipe, A. (2024). Pandemic Life-lines: A Multimodal Autoethnography of COVID-19 Illness, Isolation, and Shared Immunities. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 11(1), 1-32. https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.11.1.7359

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 1, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Mar 15, 2024
• Publication Date: Mar 15, 2024
• Deposit Date: Mar 14, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 18, 2024
• Journal: Medicine Anthropology Theory
• Print ISSN: 2405-691X
• Electronic ISSN: 2405-691X
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Library
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-32
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.11.1.7359
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2328824