Dancing with Coronaspheres
Expanded Breath Bodies and the Politics of Public Movement in the Age of Covid-19
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19004570 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kate Elswit (0000-0001-9541-107X, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 894-916 |
| Publication date | 2022-06-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cultural Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0950-2386 • E-ISSN: 1466-4348 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09502386.2022.2073459 |
| OpenAlex | W4282959826 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 48 |
This essay develops the concept of the ‘coronasphere’ to grapple with how breath shifts the perceptible extent of the body during a pandemic, and the implications of such a radically altered sense of proximity for the choreography of public movement. Coming into being through an act of perception that is entangled with responsibility to others, the coronasphere is offered as a sensory alternative to fixed-distance models of social distancing approaches to risk, one that overrides the false dichotomy between the seeming stasis of shelter-in-place on the one side, versus ‘freedom’ of movement on the other. Redefining the extent of bodies relationally by the range of their breath has implications for understanding the uneven impacts of COVID-19 in terms of tactile entanglements and the vulnerability to uninvited touch that may violate bodies as individual and impermeable, in particular when the capacity for movement is limited. Ultimately turning to the coherence of such expanded bodies in terms of individual versus communal mobilization through a series of protests, the essay shows how the pandemic can not only reify but challenge the conflation of freedom and mobility, and the sensory ramifications of this in terms of finding new ways to rebuild public life
Aesthetics · Art · Choreography · Dance · Distancing · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Perception · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Sociology · Visual arts · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law
Critical moves
Phenomenology of Illness
Data Feminism
Assessing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels as a contributing factor to coronavirus (Covid-19) fatality
Air pollution and Covid-19 mortality in the United States
Studying Covid-19 in light of critical approaches to risk and uncertainty
Dancing on Violent Ground
Breathing Matters
A Commentary
A living cabinet of breath curiosities
Keywords Symposium
A Precarious Dance, a Derivative Sociality
The Moving Body and the Will to Culture
Talking Politics of Contact Improvisation with Steve Paxton
Battling in the Bronx
A Touching Analysis
Politics, Pushback, and Pandemics
Breathing in India, c. 1890
Ecologies of Comparison
Black Night Is Falling
Sars Epidemic and the Disclosure of Singapore Nation
Choreopolice and Choreopolitics
How do data come to matter? Living and becoming with personal data
Breathing like a Soldier
Data intimacies
Self-tracking in the Digital Era
Breathing Spaces
Aesthetic self-medication
Atmospheric Sensibilities
Preferred Interpersonal Distances
Airways
Plague Masks
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |