The Plague: Living Death in Our Times

In this searching meditation, Rose (On Violence and on Violence Against Women), codirector of the University of London’s Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, explores what novelist Albert Camus, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and philosopher Simone Weil can teach readers about the inequalities exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Passages from Camus’s 1947 novel The Plague, about the fictional disease’s exacerbation of the “yawning gulf between rich and poor,” anticipated the impact of Covid-19, Rose writes, pointing to the disparity between U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who received top-of-the-line medical care after contracting the virus, and an East London nurse who died from it at home after his requests for an ambulance were refused. Freud’s writings offer insight into creating a more empathetic world, according to Rose, who suggests that the flip side of Freud’s assertion that individuals feel some hostility even toward loved ones is that people can also empathize with “putative enemies,” such as China, “a country the Western world is now being told to hate.” Rose’s sophisticated analysis brings an idiosyncratic perspective to the Covid era, and she concludes on an optimistic note, encouraging readers to embrace Weil’s call for solidarity with the downtrodden. It’s a profound take on creating a more just world in the wake of the pandemic. (Aug.)