The Phenomenology of Contagion

The lived experience of COVID-19 forcibly returns us to our bodies. This essay uses this (for most, sudden) return to embodiment to consider how our senses, as well as our “sense” of space, have been reoriented by this pandemic. It turns to certain strands within feminist philosophy that have questioned the privileged place vision has been accorded in the history of Western thought, as well as to mid-twentieth century phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s aim to rediscover the world of perception by philosophically centring the body, as touchstones to put forth a phenomenology of contagion. Contagion makes us confront our phenomenological and embodied experience of tactility. This focus on tactility undermines the philosophical hierarchy of the senses that accords sight as the most “noble” of the senses in Western canonical thought. While COVID-19 results in us rediscovering our bodies through touch in a moment of fear and panic, this essay considers how this rediscovery may be harnessed for different, possibly more just, futures.