Degrees of Separation: Part 3
by Anna Gaberscik
Disorder and Absurdity in Times of Crisis
You open your eyes to the sun streaming into your window, like everyday before. It is the morning, or maybe it is even noon. You wake up unsure of what you will do that day, whether or not it even makes sense to wake up as early as you would to go to work. You are overcome with the strangeness of the day ahead, the uncertainty of the distant future that lies even further ahead. So many things that gave us structure have now gone into an indefinite hibernation, how does one make sense of it? There are many answers to that question. One of which is that one doesn’t make sense out of the situation. Up is down and left is right, and there is a great deal of precedence throughout history that showcases people adjusting and accepting a ‘disorderly’ order. The ‘disorder’ may even become the new order. Out of the disarray of an epidemic comes a reinterpretation of social, political and economic hierarchies; flipping the established order onto its head. Those who exercised various types of power over the populace may struggle or perhaps even fail entirely to maintain control and composure. When faced with a merciless outbreak that strikes society in an all-encompassing manner, leaks in the vessel of society are exposed that have been there all along. Those who have been tasked to protect and help us prove may themselves capable and competent or helpless and unhelpful.
In this edition of “Degrees of Separation” we explore absurdity and disarray in quarantine. What structures in society give us a sense of stability, security and maybe most importantly, a sense of predictability in our lives?
In extreme cases, a near disintegration of hierarchies can be triggered due to an epidemic. As a result, people lack any point of reference for behavior or existence, resulting in a society uninhibited and unchecked. Although a complete state of mayhem does not always arise, elements of that mayhem are not hard to find.
One can interpret the pathogen as something that constantly threatens to become the new hegemon. Where a society is depends on to what extent the pathogen has ‘taken over’ or not. Slight disarray signals that a threat to the normal order and power structures has been detected, that which has previously caused for order is being jeopardized. Complete disarray, on the other hand, signals that the established power structures have been made virtually irrelevant, and that the pathogenic hegemon has successfully dethroned its predecessors, dictating life and thus, the new order. In this extreme case, the new hegemon is ruthless and rules incessantly, belittling and relativizing those previously deemed as unshakably strong.
We observe this rare, extreme state to better understand the milder versions of it, the small glimpses of that confusion that we can observe from our lives today and the accounts of those from the past.
In “Das Paradoxe: Literatur zwischen Logik und Rhetorik :Festschrift für Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow zum 70. Geburtstag” by Carolina Rohman and Gerold Schipper-Hönicke, the chronicles of societal shutdown and confusion are revisited and examined. Many of the common occurrences are relatively expected, reports of shops and churches closing, fear amongst the people. Looking back , one observes the destabilizing domino effect that the first few preventative measures can have. The closure of non-essential services might be followed by the closure of essential services. State authority can become weaker as resources dwindle. In some worst case scenarios, the lack of structure, purpose, and hope during some of Europe’s numerous plagues led people to lawlessness, barbarity and absurdity.
Rohman and Schipper-Hönicke go on to contend that people become more susceptible to collective hopelessness and insanity during epidemics when death’s ‘character’ is no longer sacred and is instead repulsive, anonymous and collective. Prospects of the present and of the future, they say, dissipate to reveal a damaged individual and thus collective Psyche. Rene Girard expands on this in his book “ The Plague in Literature and Myth,” stating that one of the most striking recurring conclusions drawn from plague descriptions is that it is a “process of undifferentiation, a destruction of specificities.” That destruction, Girard says, “is often preceded by a reversal…Social hierarchies are first transgressed, then abolished. Political and religious authorities collapse. The plague makes all accumulated knowledge and all categories of judgment invalid…” The reversal, transgression and abolishment of hierarchies that is proposed to be the result a serious outbreak, however, only holds to a certain extent. The ostracism and neglect of marginalized groups are often exasperated in times of crisis, these rifts being made clearer. These marginalized groups can then fall victim to scapegoating and heightened fear- and blame-based xenophobia. This particular topic will be covered in another edition of the “Degrees of Separation.”
In times of distress and confusion, creative outlets are essential. Writing is just one of these many outlets.
Storytelling, in its many forms, has been a mode of expression and reflection for millenia . Storytelling is as old as time. People have put pen to paper to record and take account of factual events in their lives, not to mention embellishing their lives and creating a whole new reality. Thankfully these creations, these stories, survive to be read by future generations.
The Black Death that ravaged the Far East and made its way to the West throughout the fourteenth century was a source of inspiration for one of the most famous pieces of literature about the Black Death: “Decameron,” written by Giovanni Boccaccio in 1353.
Boccaccio sets the stage with a frame story: a wealthy group of Florentines, consisting of seven women and three men flee the city of Florence to the countryside during the Black Death of 1348. They spend two weeks in a Villa, telling a total of 100 stories over the course of that time. The topics and style of the stories are remarkably distant from tradition, boldly exploring scandalous topics and the taboo. The themes of the stories range from witty and silly, to moralizing and tragic. Erotical and religious themes are recurring, even interloping with each other. The sense of urgency and freedom to express suppressed feelings or impulses, Boccaccio shows, may very well come from the relativizing and dehumanizing effects of an epidemic or pandemic. There is strong emphasis put on the way in which one lives versus how long one lives, an element of hedonism certainly prevails. Societal norms are disregarded and certainly transgressed in the 100 stories, allowing the reader to live vicariously through the characters of the frame story to explore absurdity, vulgarity and the abnormal.
The following text is by an author we met in the previous “Degrees of Separation,” A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. Defoe describes a scene on a London street during a great outbreak of the plague in the 1660s. At this point in his journal, the state of the city is dismal and dark, the plague had been already ravaging for some months. Defoe is met by surprise by some spiffily dressed ‘thieves’ on one of his regular walks through the city:
Title: A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe
I was surprised that when I came near my brother’s door, which was in a place they called Swan Alley, I met three or four women with high-crowned hats on their heads; and, as I remembered afterwards, one, if not more, had some hats likewise in their hands; but as I did not see them come out at my brother’s door, and not knowing that my brother had any such goods in his warehouse, I did not offer to say anything to them, but went across the way to shun meeting them, as was usual to do at that time, for fear of the plague. But when I came nearer to the gate I met another woman with more hats come out of the gate. ‘What business, mistress,’ said I, ‘have you had there?’ ‘There are more people there,’ said she; ‘I have had no more business there than they.’ I was hasty to get to the gate then, and said no more to her, by which means she got away. But just as I came to the gate, I saw two more coming across the yard to come out with hats also on their heads and under their arms, at which I threw the gate to behind me, which having a spring lock fastened itself; and turning to the women, ‘Forsooth,’ said I, ‘what are you doing here?’ and seized upon the hats, and took them from them. One of them, who, I confess, did not look like a thief—‘Indeed,’ says she, ‘we are wrong, but we were told they were goods that had no owner. Be pleased to take them again; and look yonder, there are more such customers as we.’ She cried and looked pitifully, so I took the hats from her and opened the gate, and bade them be gone, for I pitied the women indeed; but when I looked towards the warehouse, as she directed, there were six or seven more, all women, fitting themselves with hats as unconcerned and quiet as if they had been at a hatter’s shop buying for their money.
I was surprised, not at the sight of so many thieves only, but at the circumstances I was in; being now to thrust myself in among so many people, who for some weeks had been so shy of myself that if I met anybody in the street I would cross the way from them.
They were equally surprised, though on another account. They all told me they were neighbours, that they had heard anyone might take them, that they were nobody’s goods, and the like. I talked big to them at first, went back to the gate and took out the key, so that they were all my prisoners, threatened to lock them all into the warehouse, and go and fetch my Lord Mayor’s officers for them.
They begged heartily, protested they found the gate open, and the warehouse door open; and that it had no doubt been broken open by some who expected to find goods of greater value: which indeed was reasonable to believe, because the lock was broke, and a padlock that hung to the door on the outside also loose, and an abundance of the hats carried away.
He describes a puzzling scene; an abandoned warehouse has been discovered by quite a number of women, who have taken the liberty to go ‘shopping.’ The warehouse, belonging to the author’s brother, had been broken into and as a consequence was open to whoever wished to enter. The women defend themselves, saying the door was open and that the hats no longer had an owner, making the merchandise free for grabs. In the midst of a horrible epidemic in London these women find an escape, a taste of the playful vanity of life that has been disrupted, “fitting themselves with hats as unconcerned and quiet as if they had been at a hatter’s shop buying for money.”
Many of us have been pushed past our limits these past few weeks. What is the strangest thing you have observed as a result of COVID-19? What are some out-of-the-ordinary behaviors that you or those around you have been exhibiting lately as a result of social distancing?
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