Affect, Protest, Pandemic: Conversations from the Crises of 2020

The conversations collected in this Special Section of Cultural Studies speak to the events and upheavals of 2020 and the political climate that led up to these events, particularly focusing on the shifting emphasis on emotion in politics that emerged in so-called “post-truth” discourse. The Covid-19 pandemic was initially hailed as a unifying experience, but this conception quickly shattered as the unequal effects of the pandemic were made visible. At the same time, the highly publicized police murder of George Floyd and other black Americans incited mass uprisings. The conversations collected here open up a series of critical forays of thought concerning the long year of 2020 and the inequalities and crises it made undeniably visible.

Davis, Elizabeth, and Megan Boler. 2022. “Affect, Protest, Pandemic: Conversations from the Crises of 2020.” Cultural Studies 36 (3): 355–59. doi:10.1080/09502386.2022.2040560.