The Minefield

As societies, we are having to grapple with the question of whether some will be made to bear a disproportionate amount of the cost of our collective response to COVID-19.

In little more than a month, the coronavirus has exploded the sense of certainty, confidence, optimism and control on which so much of modern life, the economy and politics are predicated. Were these always just illusions?

Any meaningful recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic will require imagination, risk, solidarity and vulnerability; it will mean refusing to ‘free-ride’ and a willingness to sacrifice. How can we cultivate this capacity for social solidarity in our time of social fragmentation and mutual distancing?

What new forms of life together — of modesty, prudence, simplicity, mutuality, sociality and cooperation — might we discover under the conditions of scarcity and social isolation imposed by the coronavirus, that perhaps we didn’t envision in more 'normal' times?

Is there a way of responding to the coronavirus that is both effective and ethical? That contributes to the tasks of social cohesion and mutual concern?

Does capitalism cultivate an ethos, an understanding of the nature of social relations and mutual obligation that is inimical to what might be called the demands of "democratic morality"?

The corporate rebranding of International Women’s Day (IWD) couldn’t be further from the day’s revolutionary roots, or any meaningful discussion of women’s liberation. It negates any discussion of the nature of power under patriarchy, and how relations of power between women and men might be genuinely transformed.

Why it is that we want to know the 'truth' about celebrities? What happens when the very promise of transparency, of authenticity — of intimacy, even — becomes part of the carefully cultivated appearance of celebrity itself?

This week on The Minefield, we explore what Montaigne referred to as "that accursed vice" — the most corrupt and all-corrupting of them all: lying.

Does representative democracy depend on practices of public scrutiny, or exercises of 'popular sovereignty' between elections?