Analyze

I've found myself returning to thinking about/around/within interstitial spaces of care, particularly within hospital settings, interested in how viral activity unsettles the ideas we have around space and boundaries, both biological and infrastructural. In COVID-19 pathology and response, the inbetween, the interstitial, become sites challenge and possibility. With COVID-19, we see an acknowledgment of once forgotten spaces quite obviously, with hospital atria and hallways being reconfigured into patient care spaces, makeshift morgues established in refrigerated trucks, and hospitals spilling out into neighboring streets and parks. More than ever, we see how hospitals are simultaneously bounded and unbounded--the most stable and unstable sites for care. Along this line of thought, what might thinking through hospitals as heterotopia of crisis and deviation afford?

Foucault outlines six principles for heterotopic spaces

The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible

Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time—which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time. This situation shows us that the cemetery is indeed a highly heterotopic place since, for the individual, the cemetery begins with this strange heterochrony, the loss of life, and with this quasi-eternity in which her permanent lot is dissolution and disappearance.

Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications.

I'm currently based in Troy, NY where I recently completed a PhD in Science and Technology Studies.  I'll soon be living in NYC to attend medical school. I can be reached at amorgan14[at]gmail[dot]com

I've long been interested in the disaster of routine medical care in the U.S. healthcare system. As far as COVID-19 is concerned, I'm particularly interested in how the long-term health impacts of intensive care are conceptualized and communicated (including Post Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS)) and the tensions between acute and chronic illness, broadly. 

How is the aftermath of COVID-19 crisis being imagined in different settings? How is this shaping beliefs, practices, and policies?

The aforementioned research article was created by Andrew Lakoff of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and Stephen Collier of The New School in New York City. Mr. Lakoff has a background in social theory, medical anthropology, and cultural anthropology. Mr. Collier holds a doctorate degree in philosophy from the University of California Berkeley and was a former chair and associate professor in the Department of International Affairs at The New School. The two authors have collaborated previously on several research articles pertaining to global health, security, and biopolitics.

The article does not focus on the immediate emergency response (law, fire, rescue, EMS), and instead focuses on the follow-up investigative response to major disasters, though this does often include fire investigation teams.

Originally published in French, this article was authored by Dr. Didier Fassin, physician of internal medicine, French anthropologist, sociologist, and an expert in public health. Dr. Fassin is also a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He has authored and edited numerous research articles and publications, in addition to receiving several awards for his work. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security that was founded on June 19, 1978. The agency's primary purpose is to coordinate the emergency and recovery response efforts to a disaster that occurs within the United States. 

The author supports the main argument primarily by relying on anecdotal evidence from interviews with patients and individuals and on statistics on patients in the regions focused on by the author.

The authors relied principally on data procured through two research workshops conducted and on anecdotal evidence gathered.

2002 RAND Corporation Report, The Global Threat of New and Reemerging Infectious Disease

2007 World Health Report, A Safer Future: Global Public Health Security in the 21st Century

"Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA)," Public Law No. 109-417

As a part of the United States Department of Labor, OSHA receives its funding/budget from the federal government. As a federal agency, OSHA is similar to other federal agencies such as FEMA in that it approaches health and safety from a broader perspective by setting standards, enforcing compliance, and promoting education and awareness.