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Morgan: What insights from critical theorizing about place can inform current efforts to understand and respond to the COVID-19

alli.morgan

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.

Morgan: Where are you situated as COVID-19 plays out? What backstories shape your engagement with COVID-19? How can you be conta

alli.morgan

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?

pece_annotation_1517348079

Joo23
Annotation of

James Oluwalanke

Dr. Pedro de la Torre

STS 201

01/29/2018

Q1. The report was basically about the how flood has been affecting newark over the past years and the adequate control measures/techniques (laws Movements,permits)

that have been put in place to ensure the prevention of flood in Newark.Agencies that prevent flood have also proven efective and functional over time as in indicated

in the text "Historically, New Jersey has taken a strong role in the development of a rigorous floodplain management program at the State level while supporting those

same efforts at the Federal level with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) "(Floodplain Mapping Unit paragraph 1).This report would make resident feel

at ease knowing the problem of flooding is uder control.

Reacting to this report, Although Its is very reassuring knowing all these Agencies,funding,laws, and concerns are in place, I believe extra effort should be put in not only

in Newark but also in other flood affected areas in New Jersey and The United States as a whole because water levels are rising (major concern in coastal areas)and new methods should be put in place to

avoid major casualties.
. .

pece_annotation_1524545787

Joo23

Air polluion involves the introduction of harmful substance into the air.These harmful substances

involves various harmful gases let out by machines, aircrafts and so on.

These pllutions could lead to serious health injuries which could lead to poverty if

too much money is spent in the hospital as treatment could be expensive.