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Short abstract

Focusing on the early response to Covid-19 in New Zealand, I argue that Rancière’s "distribution of the sensible" is particularly useful for examining crises, but does not go far enough in assisting us in understanding the experiential dimensions of social turmoil.

Long abstract

Social science examinations of crisis have been dominated by critiques of crisis rhetorics as ploys to extend State power (often inspired by the work of Giorgio Agamben). But crises have sensory dimensions that impact both people’s lived experiences and their engagement in the political. Employing but also modifying Jacques Rancière’s “distribution of the sensible” elucidates these dimensions and reveals their political import. Rancière’s emphasis on the nexus between sensory experience, knowledge, and the political as well as his insistence on the plurality of “distributions of the sensible,” enables us to more closely examine the interplay between State discourses and public perspectives during states of emergency and. Drawing on the example of the COVID-19 pandemic in Aotearoa/NZ, I examine how, even during a relatively contracted time frame, various distributions of the sensible can come into being not only between social groups, but also (contra Rancière), within communities or even within individuals. A broader conceptualization of how sensory-political-knowledge regimes emerge, gain or lose traction, and conflict with one another enables insight, I suggest, into how and why some occasions in history are experienced as times of chaos, unmooring, or feeling off balance and thus, yields a better understanding of the co-production of public and State framings of these events.