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COVID Masks as Semiotic Expressions of Hate

In April 2021, as COVID briefly appeared to recede in the United States, Fox News host Tucker Carlson went on a lengthy rant against mask wearers. It appeared as if, to paraphrase Hegel, the owl of Minerva was flying at dusk. Why complain about masks at the very time mask mandates were being rolled...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Kahn, Rob
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8941362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35340786
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11196-022-09885-7
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author Kahn, Rob
author_facet Kahn, Rob
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description In April 2021, as COVID briefly appeared to recede in the United States, Fox News host Tucker Carlson went on a lengthy rant against mask wearers. It appeared as if, to paraphrase Hegel, the owl of Minerva was flying at dusk. Why complain about masks at the very time mask mandates were being rolled back and society was—or so it seemed—returning to normal? The answer must lie in the mask itself, and what it represents. In anti-masking discourse, the mask has had two symbolic meanings—mask wearers as sheep, and the masks as burqas. Sheep are obedient, while burqas are instruments of social control. At a deeper level, the very act of mask wearing becomes seen as oppressive, while revealing one’s face is freedom itself. This view of masking (and revealing one’s face) is not new, rather it dates back in Europe to a “revolutionary transparency” that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution that has been appropriated by anti-maskers. While the sheep and burqa images have some play in anti-masking discourse, the connection between freedom and showing one’s face is the most durable message anti-maskers see conveyed by the COVID face mask.
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spelling pubmed-89413622022-03-23 COVID Masks as Semiotic Expressions of Hate Kahn, Rob Int J Semiot Law Article In April 2021, as COVID briefly appeared to recede in the United States, Fox News host Tucker Carlson went on a lengthy rant against mask wearers. It appeared as if, to paraphrase Hegel, the owl of Minerva was flying at dusk. Why complain about masks at the very time mask mandates were being rolled back and society was—or so it seemed—returning to normal? The answer must lie in the mask itself, and what it represents. In anti-masking discourse, the mask has had two symbolic meanings—mask wearers as sheep, and the masks as burqas. Sheep are obedient, while burqas are instruments of social control. At a deeper level, the very act of mask wearing becomes seen as oppressive, while revealing one’s face is freedom itself. This view of masking (and revealing one’s face) is not new, rather it dates back in Europe to a “revolutionary transparency” that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution that has been appropriated by anti-maskers. While the sheep and burqa images have some play in anti-masking discourse, the connection between freedom and showing one’s face is the most durable message anti-maskers see conveyed by the COVID face mask. Springer Netherlands 2022-03-23 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8941362/ /pubmed/35340786 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11196-022-09885-7 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Article
Kahn, Rob
COVID Masks as Semiotic Expressions of Hate
title COVID Masks as Semiotic Expressions of Hate
title_full COVID Masks as Semiotic Expressions of Hate
title_fullStr COVID Masks as Semiotic Expressions of Hate
title_full_unstemmed COVID Masks as Semiotic Expressions of Hate
title_short COVID Masks as Semiotic Expressions of Hate
title_sort covid masks as semiotic expressions of hate
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8941362/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35340786
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11196-022-09885-7
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