Pandemic Space: Understanding Quarantine and Responsibilization in times of Corona

n March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 crisis to be a global pandemic. Occurring in a moment in which ever-expanding flows of people, goods, and information – generally subsumed under the term globalization – seemed inevitable, public health measures enacted from the international to the local level brought these flows to a sudden halt. Border closures, the isolation of cities, and the necessity to quarantine those (suspected to be) infected with the virus revealed the relationship between people and contagious pathogens to be inherently spatial. While broader restrictions of movement tend to be enacted through direct forms of state power, everyday social distancing relies more heavily on appeals to citizens’ responsibility towards themselves and other members of society. The DFG funded project Pandemic Space: Understanding Quarantine and Responsibilization in Times of Corona aims to investigate these points of convergence, where spatial phenomena such as quarantine and discourses surrounding responsibility generate pandemic spaces.