The dialectic of alienation and sociability: A Simmelian reading of the pandemic

There was a great focus at present (with this article written in May 2020, during the middle of the first wave of the pandemic) on the disciplinary architecture that will envelop society as a result of the ‘state of exception’ that the COVID-19 Pandemic represents (Van den Berge, 2020), and the negative psycho-social effects of social distancing. However, in contrast to these alienating outcomes, outbreaks of disease have historically also resulted in greater sociability, making it worthwhile to examine the ‘Coronavirus Crisis’ in light of the great sociologist of sociability: Georg Simmel. Alongside new surveillance policies and practices of dividing and confining, and concerns over a collapse in subjective well-being that portents a mental health crisis, there is also a manifest democratic sense of togetherness, and a popular commitment to public health, and new rituals that undergird this. The cause in one sense is because pandemics make nonsense of Social Darwinism and social elites’ sense of exceptionalism. The poor may suffer most, but privilege does not provide a complete escape, making it clear that public health is the route to an individual’s well-being. President Trump’s politics of division, distilled in the phrase ‘the China virus’, is a constant of his political career, rather than something new caused by the changed times, and comic-macho politicians whose modus operandi is mock dominance rather than amicability have manifestly been the least effective and have been badly discredited. Spikes in social solidarity in eras of pandemics can be seen throughout history, through elite support for the poor to mitigate the conditions that facilitated the spread of plague through public welfare in the shape of entertainment, nutrition and medical care (Cohn, 2012). Practical public health innovations emerge, such as the quarantine in Venice, the centre of European trade at the time, or John Snow’s social epidemiology in London, the centre of industrial, urban modernity. But alongside these, as Cohn (2012) shows, despite the belief in the association between pandemics and scapegoating, violence and blame, they are in most cases linked with a new commitment to interdependence and a lack of blame for an ‘other’.

The internalisation of consideration of public health into habitus can be seen in the crystallisation of rituals that underpin the evident need for solidarity by producing the motivation to support it, and enshrine everyday practices of cleanliness, respect, sociability and orderliness. New public rituals to propitiate the gods by expressing a commitment to reducing class antagonisms and social distance, and to celebrate collective overcoming have been linked with pandemics across the centuries. The plagues in the Roman Empire resulted in vows to Apollo to stage games, build chapels, and establish holy days and festivals. The Festa del Redentore in Venice was instituted to mark the ending of a plague outbreak. Kyoto’s Gion Festival is a major festival that arose out of epidemics, with a focus on purification and the warding off of future plagues, and the establishment of sociability and solidarity to support this (Roemer, 2007). The origins of the Double Ninth Festival in China is similar, as are those of the Dragon Boat Festival, the Bonalu festival in India, Nyepi day in Bali and the Kundum festival in Ghana (Etikpah, 2015). A consistent association is thus the importance of conviviality as well as public health measures to successfully ward off the pandemic.

If it were not for living in the context of social acceleration where all that is solid melts into air (Rosa, 2013) we could imagine some of the ritual expressions of solidarity and sociability that we are witnessing today becoming crystallised into traditions in the future. For example, myriad micro-level rituals have emerged, which express social solidarity and sociability to support public health measures, providing a muted, festive quality to the lockdown, seen in the decoration of neighbourhoods aimed at the general raising of morale and espirit de corps, and the need to express our collective being. Sociability must be connected with serious life to prevent it being trivial, but it must be an end in itself, with a focus on personalities rather than instrumental goals. There is hence a link to serious business, but a freedom from serious practical interests, shifting the focus to play, a stylised mode of interacting, for the end of interaction itself, and the expression of equality and reciprocity (Simmel, 1997a). Sociable play linked with the very gravity of the moment is evident all around in the normally sober metropolitan environment. National flags hang out the front of houses; some with messages, such as: thanks to our front-line workers; little humorous works of craft pop up, such as masks being glued on to the faces of statues and murals. The front window of a local house is covered in photocopies of toilet paper to create the optical illusion that they had the temporarily precious commodity stacked from floor to ceiling, with a message added of ‘we’re stocked if you need some, ring the bell!’. Less tongue in cheek, and more sincere expressions also feature, such as a long line of trees with yellow ribbons tied to them. Most common is Easter decorations made by kids hanging in front windows or gates, showing their art to the neighbourhood in a sweet gesture of camaraderie and mutual recognition. Larger rituals of solidarity have emerged in an evanescent manner, such as standing in the front garden collectively banging pots, lighting candles in front window, mass choreography dance-at-a-distance gatherings, and socially distanced exercising on the street. On a more everyday basis we are witnessing the emergence of new rituals of sociability. An example is the transformation of the front garden into a social club, with people sitting on fold-up chairs either side of the gate, and a succession of people stopping for ‘the chat’ at a distance, removing the sterility of neighbourhoods. There is a sense, ironically for a shut down, that there is action all around. Less dramatic, but more fundamental perhaps is the new emphasis on etiquette and civility. This can be seen in the interaction rituals of queuing at shops and pharmacies, showing that you are showing a respectful distance when passing people on the street, and the pleasant obligation of having a chat with people on the checkout, and saying thanks to them for keeping us all fed. The seriousness of the moment has bolstered sociability, for example in the showing of respect and consideration of others through little signs of ‘civil inattention’ (Goffman, 1963), repeating the phrases ‘these challenging times’ and ‘stay safe’, and references to good wishes for others’ wider social circle and vulnerable relatives in every email. Although these expressions become a bit stereotyped, they are a marked change from more robotic ways of interrelating and emphasise a novel emphasis on a mutual recognition of personality.

There is a certain feeling of the pandemic bringing us in touch with a more communal and even traditional way of life (witness the groups of kids cycling just to get some fresh air, or teenagers out for a walk with their parents, or parks filled with people rediscovering the Victorian joy of nature in the city). The usual solitary visit to the supermarket to purchase mundane items of sustenance and egoist minor pleasure has been granted a degree of nobility and purpose through the need to pick up items for elderly relatives who cannot visit such crowded spaces for health reasons. We should however remember that Simmel would note that the play aspect of modernity rises in proportion to the need for compensations due to its alienating nature. The COVID-19 pandemic represents also an enormous intensification of the level of abstract, instrumentalised modes of coordination in our lives and orientation to quantified measures as a guide to conduct, causing an increase in objective culture, and the dominance of this over subjective experience. This is evident in the focus and authority it has given (in most countries) to expertise, in the extensions of surveillance technology, in globalisation and the immediate transmission of events in terms of infection, economic ripple effects, the growth in strategies for modifying behaviour to preserve collective physical and economic health. The pandemic has intensified sociability, but in proportion to the alienating dynamics of modern culture. Simmel (1997b) outlined the process whereby objective culture dominates subjective culture, making the attainment of individual personality difficult and disordered. This tragic quality of culture has intensified, as we now are forced to live in every moment under the weight of a collective obligation to the wider social configuration. A trip to the shops is a choreography dramatising to the person that they are simply a unit in a vast mechanism, as one shuffles from one line tape-marked on the ground to the next, as instructed, or moves with a batch of people to a new position. The current intensification of interdependence is matched by an intensification of individualism, as we come to rely on everyone (today, the lives of our loved ones literally depend on each persons’ conduct), but not on anyone in particular.

The psycho-social distance between people in some ways has intensified through a magnification of the ‘fear of contact’, aversion and repulsion, and a reduction of things to objective terms, which is a feature of metropolitan life in general. Simmel (1997c) noted ‘reserve’, a mental distance and mutual repulsion between people, as typical of modern subjectivity. Reserve has been multiplied many times over, by the danger people present by their literal potential infectiousness. Face masks withhold the regard of others, screens separate customers and shopkeepers, we social distance, and we have learned an aversion to touch. Social distancing has removed the handshake, the bisou, the playful punch on the shoulder that signalled the stepping out of mutual alienation. The meal (Simmel, 1997d) as the paradigmatic ritual of sociability, in the modern form as ‘eating out’, has been replaced by queues of cars with their occupants waiting to pick up a takeout. We cleanse ourselves after stepping out into shared spaced, with handwashing. Our nostrils, earholes, mouths – the doors from the monad to the social – have become sites of danger, requiring protection, distance and cleansing to prevent the infectious outside world penetrating it. Sensory exchanges that mediate the reciprocity and smoothness of interactions have been removed or fatally disrupted, as in the lack of proper eye contact in a video call. Simmel (1997e) explains that with the eye one reveals oneself in receiving the look from the other, so that one cannot take without giving, and the ear is less reciprocal than the eye, taking but not giving, and unable to avoid taking. Video meetings combine the narcissism of viewing oneself in interactions rather than one’s interlocutors, with the blasé attitude of reserve by shutting off one’s camera and microphone at will. Reserve is matched by a huge growth in privacy that has turned people into idiōtēs, literally private persons, which is producing loneliness, cognitive decline, and feelings of oneself descending into being somewhat socially unhinged, as people ‘stay at home’ and cocoon.

The normal compensations for the excessive authority, intensity and rationality of modern culture have been perhaps most effected by the pandemic, in a social recession, characterised by a loss of playful modes of interaction, with no sport and no ‘third spaces’ (Oldenburg, 1999), alongside the loss of the mournful, yet high sociability of funerals. But here we can see the Simmelian dialectic of play and alienation once more. Pubs were closed on 15th March, but bottle banks are anecdotally overflowing, off-licence sales have spiked, domestic consumption has become more normalised, and people experiment with how to socialise at a distance. There is a stepping out of crystallised routines leading some into trouble, but for others reinscribing the emphasis on the meeting of personalities, rather than simply going through the motions. This can be most notably seen in death, as people have been going beyond the normal to show respect for a person’s passing or loss, often in quite beautiful ways, showing the eternal nature of the dialectic between the alienation of modernity and sociability.