Paper short abstract:

I will take exemplary scenes described in my Corona diary and unravel them in an ethno-psychoanalytically inspired way, leading to a scenic understanding of experiencing the pandemic. In doing so, I propose a way of using the pandemic confinement in order to realise an anthropology beyond the home.

Paper long abstract:

Ever since the pandemic has taken over our lives, I have been writing a Corona diary. Especially during lockdown number 1 in the spring of 2020, I (at times excessively) gathered fieldnotes describing our upside-down everyday life as a married couple with two, kindergarten and primary school aged, daughters that suddenly scrambles to make arrangements for full time home-office in a small flat.

In my talk, I would like to take a few exemplary scenes described in my diary and unravel them in an ethno-psychoanalytically inspired way, leading us to a scenic understanding (as developed by Alfred Lorenzer) of the situations described. An ethno-psychoanalytical interpretation approach such as scenic understanding draws on atmospherically present complexes of meaning distributed in scenic associative imageries. Together with unravelling emotions articulated within the research diary it renders visible latent field and cultural logics of living (through) the pandemic.

The pandemic experience has thrown (many of) us back onto ourselves, our subjectivity, our corporeality, our familial relationships, our domestic space, and into constantly negotiating intimacies of different scales. I would like to take this call as an opportunity to introduce this ethno-psychoanalytical approach and show how it might be able help us use this “confinement” productively, allowing us to go from an anthropology of / at / from the home to an anthropology beyond the home.